


Hide and Seek

by tvsn



Series: H+S [4]
Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: AU-Modern, Additional Warnings Apply, Bar fights, Catfishing, Criminal Investigation, Dark Comedy, Divorce, Fluff, Friendship, International trade, Local Politics, Marriage, Money laundering, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rejection, Romance, Self-Medication, Slow Burn, attempted manslaughter, chemical dependency, immigration fraud, immigration policy, lengthy discussions, political corruption, post-college, sport references, women’s glossies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-05 16:07:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 38
Words: 373,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6711946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvsn/pseuds/tvsn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Woodhull and John Graves Simcoe attempt to hide the body of a man they believe themselves to have killed in an act of manslaughter. Hours later, they return to the scene of the crime in order to dispose of the corpse only to discover that it has gone missing. It quickly becomes clear that they are not the only people with a vested interest in finding it. </p><p>When their victim later shows up at an engagement party neither is particularly keen on attending, it seems everyone has something to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Alibi

**Author's Note:**

> Ultimately this is the story of the weird friendships one tends to develop with people in a local pub. That said, the first chapter is extremely dark, which, if I know myself at all, will probably be a recurring theme throughout the work. Don’t worry, nothing is as bad as it initially seems, but if you are the type of person who shies away from trigger warnings, it might be best to sit this one out. 
> 
> Okay, still with me? Enjoy!

The last time Mary Woodhull had been in the old, filthy, 4-door sedan, it had belonged to her best friend. Technically, it hadn’t changed possession in the six years since, but rather, everything else had. The last time she had seen Anna Smith they had been roommates. She found herself considering the bitter irony of that fact as she searched the glove compartment for the pack of cigarettes she remembered Anna used to store there, becoming ever more frustrated that she could not find what she was looking for. She considered that Anna had quit - giving her apparent circumstances - but the choking odor inside the auto suggested otherwise. Furthermore, Mary noted, the excess of empty coffee-cups, water bottles, candy wrappers, papers, clothes, magazines and books indicated that even if she had in fact stopped smoking, it was unlikely that she would so much as think to remove the small box of vice from her glovebox.

Mary herself hadn’t smoked in years.

She found a lighter laying among the various papers Anna had deemed important enough to neatly stack, but nothing to burn.

She wondered if she should go inside and buy a pack - see what was taking her unlikely accomplice so long - but ultimately decided against it. She didn’t want any more record of the night’s adventure than she had agreed to.

Still, she would have absolutely killed for a fag. Mary hated herself for the urge. She blamed the scent lingering in the upholstery that had likely brought it on. She figured that deserved, nay, needed the nicotine fix for which she was figuratively ready to slay, as she had literally murdered a man for less not an hour before.

The last time Mary had smoked, she had been a rising sophomore in college. A pregnancy test sat on the kitchen table as Mary paced the length of the small adjourning room, breaking her own rule against cigarettes indoors. The timer she had set sounded. Mary inhaled once more before reading the result. Two lines. She walked over to the sink, turned on the faucet, and held the smoldering stub underneath water which ran like her tears. She didn’t say anything when Anna came home later that evening from her shift at the bar with a big smile of her face. A smile which Mary remembered returning. Anna had unexpectedly run into and “reconnected” with her high-school sweetheart. Mary, in desperate need of a distraction, had asked her for details. In short time she came to find that Anna’s ex and the man whose seed she carried were one and the same.

Mary moved out two weeks later without giving her then-friend a clear reason as to why.

Throughout the course of her marriage, she had never once brought the matter to her husband’s attention.

She wondered periodically if she would have kept the baby, gotten married to a man with whom she had very little in common and moved out of the city had she never found out that this same man had once belonged to the woman whom she had admired and envied since freshmen orientation.

She wondered what had happened over the course of Anna’s life since her departure from their shared flat that it now seemed to be following a similar trajectory.

Perhaps Simcoe would know, he had mentioned the name of the woman whose car Mary had borrowed on the drive down. However, it seemed to Mary that the less she spoke with the man who was keeping her waiting in a dimly lit parking lot on the other side of the sound in the sound, the better. Fifteen minutes for half a tank of gas, a box of condoms, and a ticket for the carwash. He was taking too long. She was starting to worry.

She was beginning to question if the situation could have been improved had she taken a second Xanax earlier that evening. She felt the effects of the first wearing off as she redirected her search from Anna’s glove compartment to under the driver’s seat.

Nothing.

Perhaps Anna had done the responsible thing after all. Or maybe Edmund had.

_Edmund and Anna._ Two names she still could not believe were collected in the same thought. Had it not been for them, she might not be here at all. She would not have had access to his medicine cabinet, she would not have had reason to take anti-depressants, she wouldn’t have driven to the pub to pick her husband up – she wouldn’t have had a car to drive.

She inhaled deeply, hoping enough second hand smoke still lingered in the Escort to take the edge off her nerves.

There wasn’t. Like everything abandoned in the sedan, the scent was just pollution.

Mary wondered if Anna’s _messy chic_ was going to be a point of contention with her now sharing Edmund’s immaculate above-garage loft. She wondered if there was a section about general tidiness in Cosmo’s  100 Questions You Should Ask Before You Tie the Knot.

She had overhead part of the magazine-generated conversation from earlier.

_“Do you believe in Karma?” Anna read aloud._

_“I believe time on earth is linear, and the attempt to assign meaning to the patterns we discover is part of the human condition.”_

Mary hadn’t understood the astronomer’s answer. She took one the two pills in her hand and swallowed it dry.

_“And as for you, my dear?”_

Mary looked at the second small, white capsule she hoped would help her sleep, considering that _dear Anna_ may need it more. She took her time answering the question. In the end it turned out that Anna didn’t know if she held any beliefs on that matter whatsoever. As she was listening though the adjourning bathroom door, returning the drug to an otherwise neglected bottle, Mary hadn’t known herself if she had any views on karma.

But what a difference a few hours could make.

Mary heard a knock on the passenger window. She removed her hand from underneath the seat. As she pulled the lever to open the passenger-side door, a soft, high voice asked her what she was looking for.

“Do you know if Anna still smokes?”

The ginger giant produced a cigarette from his dark green jacket and handed it to her. He crouched his shoulders slightly forward as he sat, straining his neck in an attempt to avoid the ceiling.

“Still?” he asked, “I wasn’t aware that the two of you were acquainted prior to this afternoon.”

“We used to be.” Mary replied flatly.

He did not inquire further.

They sat in silence for a few minutes with the windows rolled down a quarter of the way, smoking Simcoe’s Gauloises.

“I opted for the wax.” he commented as he threw his butt out.

Mary didn’t care so long as the front bumper was clean.

“Do you think we should risk leaving DNA evidence behind?”

“I think the plan will work at least well enough that we needn’t worry about the authorities finding a single stub among thousands across state lines.” Simcoe seemed distant, aloof. She had heard his name before in conversations she had not taken part in, but the man sitting beside her seemed nothing of the brute of which her husband and her father-in-law’s other tenant had spoken. Nothing? Mary corrected herself. An hour prior, Simcoe had come close to beating a drunkard to his death. She watched him as he picked up random objects within Anna’s Escort, examining them with feigned interest for a moment before setting them back down. Was he nervous or was he as oddly calm as she was?

She knew that he and Hewlett visited the same psychiatrist. Perhaps they were on the same prescription as well. Hewlett neither took his medicine nor seemed to realize when a pill or two went missing. Simcoe may well have been more responsible in that regard, though given the night’s events in their entirety it was impossible to say.

Mary looked at her cigarette, feeling a bit of disgust in herself as she threw the rest of it -still burning- from the window of the parked car.

“I don’t really smoke.” she clarified, unprompted. Simcoe curled his lips in response.

 

* * *

 

The car was lifted onto the automated platform of the $26 full-service carwash in the near-empty Connecticut rest stop her passenger had suggested. It felt wonderful to surrender control. Mary knew she shouldn’t have been driving before ever stepping into the borrowed automobile. After putting her son Thomas to bed early, she had taken a prescription drug which wasn’t hers, poured herself half a glass of Riesling, curled up with a Jane Austin novel she had read a hundred times before and attempted not to speculate about what may have been happening down the hall. She had been living in her father-in-law’s mansion for the past year or so; her own house – which she had purchased during the bubble, still unfit to pass inspection. Edmund Hewlett had been renting one of the many rooms when unforeseen repair costs had forced Mary, her husband Abe, their son and their au pair under Richard Woodhull’s roof. Mary had always loved the house, but she hated calling it home. Her husband now elected to hang out in the city most nights in an attempt to avoid seeing his father. He slept most days. Mary sometimes wished she had that option as the judge could be a most unpleasant man. The elder Mr. Woodhull’s tenant was polite enough, though never really present when he sat with the family at mealtime. She knew from small talk that he was working on his Ph.D. in astrophysics, that he had a job lined up with the ESA, and that he was leaving at the end of the spring semester. Mary hadn’t grown particularly attached. A month ago, however, he casually mentioned that he had met someone and was considering staying stateside after all. Could he renew his lease? Would it be possible for _her_ to move in? Mary had been pleasantly surprised by this unexpected turn of events, Richard seemed somehow relieved. They ought both to have asked more questions.

When Mary had come home from work that afternoon, eager to meet the woman she hoped would grant her a bit of reprieve from the tedium of living in a house full of men consumed by their own interests, she was appalled to see a slightly older version of the girl she had once planned to drive cross country with. A girl whom she had since blocked on all social media platforms. Mary had found herself unable to so much as formulate a greeting.

Edmund Hewlett’s _someone_ was apparently the recently divorced Anna Strong, nee Smith. Abe’s ex. Abe’s gorgeous, brave, spontaneous, fun-loving first love, whose name he still occasionally moaned in his sleep.

Mary had watched as Anna’s confusion slowly transformed into understanding. She realized that she had never given her former friend an explanation for her sudden departure from her life. Now it seemed she needn’t. Anna’s eyes were on Thomas as Edmund happily introduced the two women to one another. They had in turn responded with _“Nice to meet you.”_ and _“It is a pleasure.”_

Anna’s tone had been apologetic, Mary’s livid. Edmund seemed none the wiser.

Mary watched the two them unpack, high-fiving - rather than embracing - when they were through. Her first thought was that he was afraid of injuring the baby - which Mary assumed based on her own experiences must exist - but Edmund seemed slightly uncomfortable with even that small level of physical contact. If Anna noticed she gave no indication, but to Mary it was clear. Anna would most certainly be alone in her affections. Edmund may well lust after her for a time, he may well have honorable intentions keeping him in America, but he would come to resent her. One day he would look at her and see all that he had given up. Anna would come to despise him for his cold stares. If the couple stayed in Setauket, she would inevitably “reconnect” with Abe.

Edmund and Anna seemed to be laughing in his room. In _their_ room.

Mary was glad the door had been closed.

She couldn’t bear to look at either of them.

 

* * *

 

Mary glanced down at her own lap and then at Simcoe’s. She could see through the thin plastic bag that he had purchased Magnums.

“We have to make it look believable.” He answered her thought without inflection.

She was beginning to second thoughts about their hastily agreed to alibi. What if the police found the body? What if their investigation lead them to the Connecticut gas station, to the seedy motel with good security cameras? What if Abe believed, as the world was intended to - should it come to that- that Mary had actually spent the night in the arms of another?

Would that become the grounds for his own affair?

“Not having second thoughts are we?”

“I’m married.”

“I respect that. My dear Mrs. Woodhull, I am a warrior yes but not a monster. I would never presume to suggest that we give this story an added layer of credibility. Here.” He handed the bag to her. “I have no intention of doing anything in the hotel beyond checking the foreign markets.”

“I thought you said they had HBO.”

“Indeed.”

They were silent again as they listened to the water and wax as it sprayed over the car, erasing any evidence of manslaughter which they hadn’t been able to wipe away with towels from the bar.

“Did you use a credit card?” Mary asked.

“For the condoms and the gas. And yes, before you ask, I put only enough in to replace what was consumed in the drive.”

“What about the Odometer?”

“It failed to turn after reaching 100,000.” Simcoe pointed with his finer. He was right. Mary really couldn’t have asked for a better get away wagon.

“And the wax?”

“After I paid, I pretended to see the advertisement for the first time, asked a few questions, and paid in cash.”

“No I mean, what if Anna notices that her car is suddenly shinny and clean from the outside?”

“Tell her it rained overnight.”

“Her boyfriend -”

“Is a glorified star gazer and a shite one at that. Not a meteorologist. Besides, he is out of work at the moment."

“He is?”

Simcoe stared at her for a moment without expression. “I take it they haven’t asked you to sign an affidavit then?”

Mary blinked, still unable to grasp the idea that her father-in-law, a man who had practiced law for over 30 years before his judicial appointment, had let someone sign a binding lease without checking references. Had that been the reason behind Hewlett’s sudden interest in the fairer sex? Over the course of the afternoon Mary had learned that Anna was some sort of manager. Was she planning on supporting them both while she was expecting? Her heart suddenly bleed for the other woman. Their situations were more of parallel than Mary had realized.

“Christ.” Simcoe sighed. Taking his phone out of his pocket, he began to type.

“Who are you texting?”

“Hewlett. Telling him he needs to familiarize himself with more Yankees and fast if he ever want to pull off this little scheme of his. Not for his sake, but rather for that of our mutual friend.” His fingers danced across the illuminated screen as he spoke.

The car wash ended. The vehicle rolled forward off of the platform, but Mary failed to start the ignition.

“You can’t text _anyone_ right now.” she warned.

“Drive over there. We need to get out and make sure that all traces of your direct involvement have been eradicated.”

Outside Mary felt the cool breeze cover her as she bent down, using the light from her smart phone to search for specks of the blood that the bumper had been drenched with. Simcoe was doing the same. Mary wondered if the man had been dead before she hit him. She wondered what Simcoe would have done if she had been completely sober at the time of the accident. If the man had a wife and children who were wondering where he was. If he would be missed.

Simcoe’s phone buzzed. He seemed annoyed as he read.

“You didn’t send the text, did you?”

“Over WhatsApp. It is encrypted.” He handed the phone to Mary.

**Oyster**

_Online_

block away.

                                                               11:26

On the left.

                                                               11:27

                                                                                                                                                                       I see it. Thx m8.

11:30

√√

 

-Today-

 If you can find an American to vouch to

the authenticity of your relationship

it will carry more weight w/INS.

2:58

√√

I appreciate the concern. Be assured that

it is wholy unwarranted. The matter has

already been addressed.

                                                                   3:05

 

“Wholly. Double L.” He said in disgust as he took the phone back.

“Thanks mate.” Mary countered, unsure of why she was defending her house-mate’s 3 AM typo to a man who might have killed her had he not needed her to collaborate an alibi. “Didn’t realized the two of you were friends.”

“Were not.” Simcoe scuffed, “And here is why, my relaxation of proper English was both intentional and acceptable. Hewlett’s was most certainly neither.”

“It is three in the morning.” She yawned, handing the phone back.

“Well that is the point, isn’t it? This little shite routinely gets away with acting like he is the only one to have passed his A-Levels, displays baseless vanity in every interaction, and yet somehow convinces people to take _pity_ on him. Its bullocks.” he spat.

He continued finding fault with Edmund, but Mary stopped listening when the monologue veered away from Simcoe’s resentment of the other man’s relationship with Anna, which she shared, into sport affiliations. She was more concerned with the fact that Hewlett was in fact awake at this hour and could vouch for the clear sky. But then maybe Anna wouldn’t ask about her car. Maybe Mary could define the wax job as a housewarming gift.

She stared at the bumper. Something about it seemed strange, but she could not put her finger on it.

“Mrs. Woodhull -”

“Mary,” she corrected. “If we are to pull this off, you should call me by my first name.”

“John.” he replied, reaching out a hand she was hesitant to take. She felt a bit sick as she shook it, remembering how earlier it had been covered in the same blood they had just finished ridding the car of.

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She responded, turning to look for dents in the bumper. She didn’t see any to her great surprise. Anna’s car was an American model, the plastic, she realized, ought to have shattered upon impact. Had the man been dead before she hit him? Mary again questioned if her decision not to call the police had been made in haste. Certainly, the family she had married into had enough connects to have gotten her off with a reduced sentence for driving under the influence, but it was too late now to even consider retreat.

John seemed to read her mind.

“We best get a move on it then.”

 

* * *

 

The slightly uncomfortable quiet resumed on the drive to the motel Simcoe had suggested. He tapped his fingers on the window without rhythm. Mary’s brain betrayed her as it tried to find a pattern in the noise. Nothing. He was having second thoughts as well. Mary thought about turning the radio on, but it somehow seemed inappropriate. Instead, she opted to break the silence with the question she had been asking herself since Simcoe had first slouched into the passenger seat back in Setauket.

“Why we’re fighting, anyway?”

“The usual.”

“Are you willing to expand?”

“Politics, mostly. Bigoted and racist remarks. After around two hours of listening to this YouTube comment section of a man vent his various frustrations over the sounds of your husband’s atrocious music, I invited him to step out into the parking lot with me. Worry not, love, he won’t be missed.”

“Never would have taken you to be socially conscious.”

“We all have our flaws.”

 

* * *

 

Sugarhouse Motel was as disreputable as Mary had been promised. She didn’t know why it surprised her that the man working reception seemed to know Simcoe by name. He put $30 on his Black American Express and led Mary to a room she wished he hadn’t referred to as his “usual suite”.

“Do you frequent these quarters often?”

“I do what my employer requires of me.”

Mary wonder for a moment what kind of criminal she was dealing with before he informed her, “I’m a stock broker. Yourself?”

“Public relations for a global NGO.”

“Hm.” Simcoe smiled again. “That certainly explains quite a bit.”

“Agreed.”

He opened the door. The room was clean, though it looked as if it had last been furnished in the late 70’s. Even the television had a back to it. Simcoe took the remote from the nightstand, turned on the old set, and input a number in the low 900s. Mary sat on the edge of the bed. It was lumpy, uncomfortable, but this was probably for the better. She would sit for an hour, watch a bit of television, return home before anyone woke up, and resume her daily life as if nothing had happened. If questions were ever raised, her alibi was solid, secure – if not embarrassing.

She exhaled. She was good at this kind of thing. The man they had killed would not be missed. Everything was going to be fine.

“I don’t want you repeating a word of our conversation.”

Mary responded with a look of skepticism. She had no intention whatsoever of mentioning any part of this nightmare to anyone for as long as her life should last. Did Simcoe? She was about to use her mom-voice on him when he clarified, “About Hewlett.”

“It isn’t in my interest to spread rumors.” Mary said, feeling that response felt more diplomatic than _I was barely listening anyway._ She was grateful that owing either to the drugs, the alcohol, the adrenaline, the stress, or a mixture of all of these factors, both she and her accomplice were able to divorce their thoughts from the crime. She wondered when the gravity of guilt would hit her.

For the moment though, her main focus was elsewhere - specifically, the German news program Simcoe had switched to.

“I thought you said they had HBO.” Mary grumbled.

“Allow me to check the DAX.” His nonchalant tone contradicted his death grip on the remote. With his other hand, Simcoe produced his phone from his jacket. Tapping the screen lightly, he continued, “If you have any interest in purchasing VW stock I might suggest you do so now.”

“It is three-thirty in the morning.”

“Making it after nine in Frankfurt.”

He went on to briefly explain something pertaining to global markets, but Mary was no longer able to listen.

She found herself gripped by the pictures displayed on the screen.

“Simcoe.”

He didn’t respond.

“Turn on CNN.”

He didn’t move.

“- Besorgnis aus New York heute Morgen. Benedikt Arnold, der Republikanischen Senator von US Bundesland Pennsylvania, erscheint nicht –„

“John!” she yelled in the same tone she used when addressing interns at work.

“Is that? It can’t be.” His fingers began tapping against the back of the controller as they had against the window in the car.

The image of the smiling man with a strong jaw faded from the TV screen. A reporter stood against a backdrop of the New York skyline.

“Bis jetzt wissen wir nichts-”

“CNN!” Mary demanded.

A woman’s artificially deep voice narrated the scene of an emptying political rally on the American network.

“-Senator Arnold was, of course, scheduled to speak at the fundraiser earlier this evening. His absence is of particular concern in the wake of threats made against him, following his recent filibuster-“

Mary watched the small figures in suits as they seemed to shuffle through an empty conference hall. She recognized the room from an event her employer had thrown the previous year. CNN was able to get in touch with the Senator’s chief of staff, who made assurances to the public that all measures were being taken to locate the elected official. Mary didn’t care about all that. She was waiting for something specific.

CNN broadcasted an official photograph again.

Simcoe sat on the edge of the bed.

“That is him. That is the man we killed.” Mary stated without glancing over at him. _“We killed a US Senator the parking lot of a dive bar.”_

“So it seems.”

“Simcoe, do you believe in Karma?”

 

 

 

 

 

                                    


	2. The Full English (Pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversations at a breakfast table, 6 weeks prior to the murder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neither of our protagonists actually appear in this chapter. Sorry about that?

“How do you want your eggs?” Edmund Hewlett asked as he cracked two into a pan which was already crowded with bacon, blood pudding and sliced tomatoes. He had no intention of eating even half of the food he had simmering in its own fat, but he was resolved to keep busy for as long as his guest continued to Skype with his mother at the kitchen table.

“Same,” the guest replied without looking up from the screen. “No, no – I was speaking to your son, he says hello.”

Hewlett had said no such thing. In fact, he had said very little since his guest had arrived, a full five hours before he had been expected.

>> _Did you forget about the derby?_ <<

He had, but he didn’t find this fact alone to be particularly surprising. Manchester had never held any great interest for him, football or otherwise. To be honest, Hewlett wouldn’t have known it was Sunday at all had he not received a most unwelcome series of texts regarding his own club’s lackluster performance the day before. He wouldn’t have otherwise realized then that there had even been a match. This was probably for the best. Part of him wanted to forget Great Britain in its entirety. He wanted to forget the flight he hadn’t taken, the exam he hadn’t passed and the faces of all of the people he had yet to explain his current predicament to. This included his family, his friends back home, and the few non-academic contacts he had made in the three years he’d spent in the colonies.

To that end, he wanted to remain locked away in his room as he had been for much of the past two weeks – spending his days in a state that fell somewhere between sleeping and controlling his urge to simply scream into his pillow; his nights gazing through his telescope in the hopes that the stars would speak to him as they once had.

Unfortunately for him it seemed, John Andre would having none of it.

Before he had lost his insurance, Andre had been his doctor. Now, he insisted, he was there as a friend. This was a lie. Andre was there, primarily, Hewlett reasoned, to make sure that he showed up to play in an association match that afternoon. The former doctoral candidate might well have refused him this request had he not felt partially responsible for the fact that they might find themselves with an actual opponent for the first time in several weeks.

Then again, had he known that Andre planned on playing life-coach in the intermedium, he might well have reconsidered inviting him in for breakfast. He most certainly would not have lent him his laptop, or have consented to a trip down to the local tavern.

“Hm? I don’t think so, there is a woman, you see. - Oh he didn’t? Hold on.”

Hewlett only heard half of the conversation over the sound of the range vent, but he didn’t need any more context. He was meant to be back in Edinburg, having lunch with his parents, celebrating his scholarly achievements, repacking his suitcases for the move down south.

Instead he was making breakfast for his former psychiatrist and mentally preparing himself for the hideous task of drinking to his recent failures with a collection of people whom he knew only by name at 10 AM on a Sunday. His bag was only packed for the football match which he had no real desire towards playing.

Hewlett wasn’t going home.

This reality alone was difficult enough for him to grapple with – without the reminder that he couldn’t legally stay in order to complete his post-graduate degree next semester.

Which is where _the woman_ came in.

_The woman_ existed only within the good doctor’s mind and only as a means to an end.

Andre himself had such a woman, Hewlett had been shocked to learn. Upon reflection however, he wonder why he had allowed that fact to surprise him. The doctor was Hewlett’s antithesis – effortlessly charming, confident, conventionally attractive, and charismatic enough to not only get a beautiful young actress to play a role in his Green Card scheme but to have together given consecutive convincing performances before audiences of immigration officers as well as New York’s elite.

When Andre had first brought the matter up shortly after his arrival, Hewlett had reminded him in no uncertain terms that he hadn’t been able to answer a few basic questions about a paper he himself had written without choking and tripping over his tongue. Even if he didn’t find the very idea of desecrating of a holy sacrament morally abhorrent, Hewlett lacked every personal characteristic that had allowed Andre to get away with that fraud.

When he had quite patiently explain as much, Hewlett felt he had been ignored.

Now he was absolutely certain of it.

While it was one thing for his countryman to suggest that he ought to deceive the US Government and at least one of its tax paying citizens to his own ends, it was another entirely for him to get his mother’s hopes up. Hewlett had just turned thirty-five. According to his estimates, his mother had been begging him to settle down for at least the past decade. Andre knew this from the hours Hewlett had spent on his office couch. He considered the possibility that he had been ignored then as well.

“I wish you wouldn’t lie to my parents,” he said curtly.

“Is that an exclusive privilege?” Andre asked after turning off the microphone.

“I’ve not lied to them, I’ve simply not been forthcoming with the truth surrounding my mishap.”

“Mishap?”

The doctor had a real talent for being able to look interested, concerned and contemplative. He raised his eyebrows slightly, bent his head to the side and pressed his lips in a way that suggested they were about to open to ask _and how does that make you feel?_

Hewlett did his level best not to simply glare back. When he felt that his face seemed incapable of obeying the orders of his mind, he turned away. He pulled two plates from the cupboard after a moment’s search, divided the contents of the crackling pan, plus a can of lukewarm backed beans and a few slices of toast among them. He took out his phone to reply to the picture he had been sent earlier from another teammate with one of his own when he realized with dismay that he had forgotten to make tea.

“Coffee alright?” he asked, noting the half pot that his house-mate Mary must have left for him.

Andre gave a single nod without averting his eyes from the screen.

“Sorry, he is busy at the moment. Says he will ring you in the evening. - No, our evening. - I will pass that along. Thank you again for the lovely care package. - Yes, were about to eat it now. I think Eddy is posting pictures of his culinary masterpiece as we speak. - Hold on. Eddy -”

Hewlett had been named for his father as his father had been named for his. He wondered if he would ever outgrow the short-form which he so hated, especially when it was not being spoken in his mother’s voice.

“Please refrain from-”

“Your mum wants you to post the pictures on Facebook.”

“I’m never on Facebook.” Hewlett responded, possibly loud enough for his mother to hear.

“I’ll send them too you Mrs. Hewlett. - Of course. - Good day to you as well. -Thank you. - No, I really must be going. - Okay, love you too. Bye.”

Hewlett felt a twinge of envy shoot through him. The last time his mother had told him she loved him was at Christmas. Had that been the last time they had spoken? He had not called her before his attempt at defending his dissertation, and he most certainly had not called her afterwards. When her care package had arrived like clockwork, he sent an email thanking her, but had received no response.

Or perhaps he had simply forgotten to look.

“Why must you do this?” he asked, half-knowing the response.

Andre closed the notebook with a hint of drama. Pushing it to the side as Hewlett set a plate down before him, he answered, “You won’t and your parents are growing concerned. We are _all_ growing concerned. When is the last time you even left the house?”

It was a legitimate argument. He had only shaved a slovenly beard after Andre’s arrival. Looking in the mirror at the dark rings under his eyes, made darker still by the contrast of his pale skin, Hewlett was not sure what the stress of failure had turned him into. He cursed his few friends from the team for not calling him out on it when last they had met.

“Wednesday” Hewlett sighed, “for training.”

For the first time in the course of their relationship, professional or otherwise, Andre looked genuinely perplexed. “We’ve training?”

“In the loosest sense of the word.”

“Since when?” he almost gaped.

“Since Akinbode happened to mention to one of his clients that he ‘played’ for a team called Bye Week. Did you … did you not receive the message in the group-chat?”

“I’ve it blocked. I had no idea you’d returned to using it for its intended purpose.”

“Here.” Hewlett handed his phone over after opening the series of messages that explained the why and how. “You have to scroll up a bit but I believe you will find that-”

“This is still just you and Simcoe hurling uninspired insults at each other,” Andre’s tone was no longer courteous or curious, though his expression remained. “I see enough of that on Twitter. No, this reaffirms my decision to -” he paused in unconcealed disgust, “honestly man, where do the two of you even find half of these pictures? Who has time for this?”

For his part, Hewlett had all the time in the world. He had no excuse for Simcoe, but then he never really did.

“Literally everyone else on the team,” he replied, suddenly ashamed at the suggestion that he was stooping.

“Was it productive then – the training?”

“Five people showed up.”

“So when you say _everyone_ else…” Andre challenged.

“With respect, that is more than we have on any given Sunday.” Hewlett rebutted.

“Quite,” he conceited before inquiring further with a hand gesture.

“We passed the ball in a circle for all of 10 minutes feeling quite content with our level of commitment, when Akinbode started up about how he got into it with a few lads he happens to be defending on assault charges who mentioned they play for Urfa SK. _Captain_ ” he stressed, leaving little doubt as to who he considered to be responsible, “suggested we pay them a visit. Akinbode knew where they had parked their food-truck and in end effect we all went for a kabab, went back to the dark lair of my nemesis and played FIFA 15 for two hours before calling it a night.”

“Did you get in a fight?” Andre gave his interested look full intensity again. As always, Hewlett couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not.

“With our esteemed captain?”

“With the guys from Urfa SK who seem set on calling us out on the pitch this afternoon,” he said flatly, evidently having gathered enough evidence from Hewlett’s mobile to support a working hypothesis with respect to his teammate’s regard for one another.

“At the Kabab place? No, it was just banter. We got –“

Hewlett’s phone buzzed. Andre blinked. “Honestly how do you have good reception out here?”

“What does it say?”

“It is in another chat.”

“With whom?”

“Demon?”

“Go on then.” Hewlett smiled.

“Actually, bring us some,” Andre read aloud.

“Ask him if he is using the royal we or if he means for me to bring breakfast for the whole pub.”

“Who am I talking to?”

“Who do you think?”

Andre handed the phone back. “Clean up your own mess.” He pulled out his own device and waved it around. “Nothing,” he complained, not for the first time that morning.

“Did you try turning it off and turning it back on again?”

“It is 2016.”

“Sometimes it helps.”

“I have been meaning to ask you how you managed to muck up your dissertation but now it seems fairly-”

“Don’t,” Hewlett warned.

He heard the sound of Andre’s phone shutting down. They ate for a few minutes in silence before Andre asked if and how much of the food he ought to spare for the others.

“None. I asked Simcoe who was pouring, he send me back a series of emoji leading me to conclude that it is _not_ one of the bartenders who turns a blind eye to outside food and beverage … which I suppose explains why he was fool enough to order a meal there in the first place.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Do you remember last year when he wrote a bunch of Game of Thrones spoilers in the gent’s and everyone assumed that I’d done it and I was banned from entry for a few weeks?”

“I remember that it took the staff roughly 3 weeks to even see the vandalism.”

“Exactly. That anyone would eat somewhere where hygiene is of such little importance that the restrooms are not cleaned daily-”

“Do you not eat street-meat on Wednesday?”

“That is not the point.”

“Hm. Quite right. Clean but costly WCs, the one thing I truly miss about the motherland.”

Andre’s sarcasm went unnoted.

“Ah, yes I … concur completely.” Hewlett had never really thought about it before, but he was willing to add the absence of self-cleaning, pay-to-piss toilets to his running tally of things he couldn’t stand about the United States.

“You’ll miss it here too, you know,” Andre said after a moment of contemplation. “Someday, a bit later than you anticipated, sure, but someday, you’ll be sitting in a lab late at night, wishing you were back state-side, eating a proper breakfast before going to a dirty dive bar with cheap beer and a sports package, taking offence when the locals correct your pronunciation of ‘soccer’ -”

“I sincerely doubt it.”

“Wait for it. Call me then to tell me I was right,” Andre said, turning his phone back on.

“I mean about working in my field. At all.” It was the first time he had said it allowed. The words seemed to linger in the air even after he was asked: “How bad was it?”

“Columbia is generously allowing me to resubmit next year, provided that I retake two courses and complete some additional specified course work … but I’ve been made redundant in my role as teaching fellow and no longer possess the credentials for either a work or student visa. On Friday I received a call from Paris informing me that with respect to my failure to defend my dissertation the ESA has decided to suspend their offer of employment. My optimism has turned to cynicism, it shames me to say, and the only thing getting me out of bed are the messages I receive from the only person whom it seems I am not paying to be in my life – who, perhaps consequently, happens to loath me.”

Andre lowered his fork and sat back. “You may find it difficult to believe right now, but I am extremely proud of you. I was … growing concerned that you were still in denial over the matter.”

“For the record, Andre, I am not paying you right now for your professional advice.”

“Nor am I giving it. But you will pay me before the morning is over, that much I can guarantee you.”

He glanced again at his phone, his slight grin vanishing. Hewlett saw an opportunity to pivot the conversation away from himself.

“Do you need to use mine?” he asked.

“No, I am waiting on something.”

“Business? Isn’t Dr. Clinton on call at the weekend?”

“He is, but this is for pleasure.”

“A girl?”

“A guy,” Andre smiled again. Hewlett would save his moral judgement for after he was done basking in his small victory. “This might take your mind off things. Do you know who Benedict Arnold is?”

“I’ve heard the name but can’t place it.”

“The senator who gave that speech a few weeks back about using drones to spy and perhaps open fire on suspected terrorist within the continental US?”

It was not what Hewlett had expected.

“Is he a patient?”

“More of a research subject. One I am desperately waiting to hear back from. You might appreciate this.”

Andre showed Hewlett a series of saved texts and photos which caused him to blush. “I … is that?” He knew exactly what he was looking at, it was the rather the question of why this information was being shared which he found perplexing. “I don’t know what you imagine about me, but I most certainly do not-”

“Want to see a dick’s dick pics?” Andre laughed, “Do you get enough from our mutual friend?”

He did, in fact, once receive such a text from a drunken teammate who swore it was meant for someone else. Once was more than enough. “I am appalled, sir,” Hewlett said without averting his eyes as Andre kept scrolling.

“You are a prude, Hewlett. Let me explain how that could work in your favor, now that I’ve your attention.”

“Don’t bother. I am significantly less interested than I was an hour ago … which is to say, not at all,” he cleared his throat. Using same tone he had lectured in for the past eight semesters, he continued, “I was not, and am not, interested in projecting my problems on to some innocent woman. I know I messed up with my final exam, I know I should have renewed my visa as a precaution back in November, but these are my problems, no one else’s. I am not about to trick someone into committing themselves to me based on my failings.”

“I never said you should,” Andre paused. “You know, two years ago you would have let your experiences embitter you. You would have looked for an easy out and you would not have cared quite so much about -”

“I do not believe myself to have been as callous as you evidently do, but go ahead, give yourself a pat on the back if you feel you must.”

“This has nothing to do with ego, Hewlett. Will you do me the simple curtesy of allowing me to explain?”

Hewlett nodded.

“My wife is cheating on me, if you can call it that. She had been for a rather long time with a man I find impossible to stomach.”

“Senator Arnold you mean?”

“No, no. He is a hobby of mine. Philomena knows, of course. We talk about getting divorced at times, as our three years have long since passed but somehow we never get around to it. It is an arrangement, nothing more. When I met Philomena she was crippled by student debt and I had just finished my residency. I wasn’t making nearly enough money at the time to buy my way into permanent residence, but I had enough for a flat, and enough to help her with a few of her bills.”

“You never loved each other at all?”

“Perhaps not in the way you would define it, but I do love her, and I have _loved_ her, if you take my meaning. Our union is, however, strictly for business purposes. We both understand that. We always have. I am telling you this because such partnerships are not uncommon, especially not in New York, and I think this might be your best shot.” Hewlett opened his wide mouth to protest. Andre held up a finger in warning. “Stop. Hear me out. You would need to fly home to apply for visa renewal and after a three month wait - if what you are telling me is true with regards to you loss of standing -there is no guarantee that your application will even be accepted. Even if it is you will have wasted the summer when you could have otherwise been completing your coursework.”

“I know.” Hewlett sighed.

“Unless you still have the equivalent of $60,000 in your trust fund -”

“I put my car up for sale ten days ago but thus far there has been no serious interest.”

“Not many people can drive a manual over here.”

“So I’ve found.”

“If you are unable to sell in a reasonable time frame, how much do you have to invest in Plan B?”

Hewlett wanted to simply reply with ‘none’, but Andre had obviously thought this through well enough that he felt obliged to be a gentleman and answer him in the numeric terms he requested. “How much can I afford to pay a woman to pretend to be the love of my life?” he clarified before doing some mental math. “Optimistically, no more than $10,000. How much did you pay Philomena?”

“Thirty. Plus the shared flat.”

“Good, alright. Glad we had this little chat.”

“Don’t be so quick to surrender.”

“I am not surrendering, I was never fighting in the first place.”

“That may be your problem.”

“I do not understand how you find it at all difficult to comprehend. I don’t want a fake wife who sleeps around with people I hate. I don’t want to pay for another fucking relationship. I am friends with you because I had insurance that covered it, my landlord and I get on chiefly due to the fact that I pay for my room and by contrast his wayward son does not. I don’t have anyone else. I don’t even know any women. Do you imagine that I am not lonely? That your solution to me temporary problem would not just make my enduring ones worse?”

Andre exhaled audibly. “You have _a lot_ of friends, Hewlett. What I said earlier, about you paying for my presence, was only in reference to the entrance fee they charge they now at the pub, due, one would imagine, to the loss of property in the many physical altercations have broken out there, some of which I believe you are partially responsible for.”

“In my defense-”

“You needed provide one. I know perhaps better than anyone how Simcoe … gets.”

This was a lie. Andre could not possibly have acquired tenth of Hewlett’s expertise on the subject. He thought about the last time they had physically come to blows more than a year prior. “The fact that he to dare insinuate anything with regards to LFC when QPR was-”

“We are not trying to rehash, I am simply stating that I am looking to you to pay the $20 fee as I spent most of my cash on the taxi out. But come, let’s finish, I want to get there a bit early to get a seat at the bar.”

“The bar? I thought you were set on watching the Manchester Derby.”

“Oh I am, I am. We’re sitting at the bar for your benefit.”

“I don’t need a drink quite as badly as you may imagine. Though, I’ll admit, I need one considerably more than I did before seeing so much of the Senator on your phone.”

“Embarrassing as it is entertaining, isn’t it? When my work has been done, you’ll understand. And speaking of the work I do on my weekends off … when over the course of our conversation did I so much mention alcohol? That is not why we are sitting at the bar.”

“Ah -” Hewlett tried to object.

“I might remind you that we are only poor within our own circles.”

“How long must this continue?”

“Until I’ve made my point.”

“Until you’ve made your point or until I’ve agreed to your scheme?”

“Both.”

“Andre, I don’t have $30,000. I don’t have a flat in Manhattan. I am not poor in my circles, I am destitute. While there may well be thousands of students within New York, $10,000 would do little towards debt relief. I can attest to this from personal experience. Even if I had your funds and the lack of moral conviction that would allow me -”

“You want to stay.” Andre said almost forcefully as he rose from the kitchen chair. “You want to finish what you have stated, enough so that you are willing to part with one of your prized possessions. Think of it this way, stranger things have been done in the pursuit science.”

“I do not argue that.”

“But?”

“What are the chances that I could find someone who would be willing to -”

“Very, very high. Do you know my receptionist?” he asked, flashing a charming smile once more.

“Abigail? Who is all but engaged?”

“She has a friend who is going through a divorce. Currently sleeping on her couch. It is an arrangement that can’t last much longer and I believe I could make an introduction that could lead to your mutual benefit.”

Hewlett shook his head, muttering under his breath “You have to be kidding me.”

“Wait. You need to let me finish.”

“If you mean _Anna Strong_ , I think you already have.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …like you have never been involved in an immigration conflict. Don’t look at me like that.
> 
> I owe a huge shout out to all of the lovely people on tumblr who were willing to answer my questions about life in the United States. I still can’t get over the fact that toilets are free, highways go through towns and cities (and not around them as the Autobahn does) and that Bill Nye was a real thing in the 90s. Thanks also to the people who advised me to break this chapter up – I hated the idea at first but now I am of the mind that it may actually be beneficial to the narrative as a whole (and not just to my update schedule.) Since this is a shout out and not a call out, I am not going to embarrass any of you by name here, but suffice it to say that if any of this refers to you, I am in your debt. 
> 
> Now, a few notes -  
> The Full English: The title of this chapter refers to the breakfast hangover cure. It consists of blood pudding (sausage), bacon, eggs, beans, tomato, and toast. 
> 
> Soccer / Football: "The ball is round and the game lasts for 90 minutes" - Sepp 
> 
> Green Card: The United States Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551) 
> 
> Bye Week: The American term for when there is no scheduled match. 
> 
> ESA: The European Space Agency, which is headquartered in Paris.
> 
> “Not many people can drive a manual over here”: Fun fact! Not many people can drive an automatic in Europe.
> 
> LFC / QPR: Two English clubs. Queens Park Rangers was an obvious choice, Liverpool’s chant goes ‘Come on you Reds!” which also seemed appropriate. The Manchester Derby is between City and United. As someone with taste I hate doing this to poor John Andre, but take a guess as to who he’s supporting in this match-up.   
> (And if you were wondering, no, I am not myself especially keen on any English club in particular. I was born and raised Fenerbahce Istanbul, but my heart now belongs to FC Bayern – and that is how integration works. Now you know. ;) 
> 
> Next week we will visit the bar before the murder, you’ll get to meet Anna, Abigail, Akinbode, Cicero, Rogers, a few of the various “redcoats” whose names I won’t trouble you with now, and Simcoe will be back. (Yay!) That should take us up to the day of the crime, and by the time Mary runs over Senator Arnold (I am hoping!) that the entirety of the interpersonal dynamics I’ve introduced will make perfect sense.  
> I will likely break for a week to revisit Medusa at some point in the near-ish future, but not next week. No, brush up on your soccer terms, kids –
> 
> Up Next: Redcoats with Red Cards
> 
> (If you want you can leave comments/kudos. Always nice, but never necessary. My only goal in posting my writing is to provide you with a few minutes of entertainment. Hope you enjoyed.)


	3. The Full English (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simcoe argues with Hewlett over the nature of statistics as if his life depends on it (and it just might.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals in part with an accidental overdose and its immediate psychological aftermath. Recurring themes include burn out, immigration fraud, association football, gambling debt, and self-medication (albeit only with beer in this round.) So … consider this your warning label.

 

“Is that British slang?” Jordan Akinbode asked the after hearing his best-friend-by-default refer to someone as an oyster for the third time that morning.

“Not … quite in this context.” Simcoe said, adding that there was a story behind the sobriquet without elaborating on in. Akinbode didn’t pursue the matter further, though he made a note to consult a dictionary with reference to the word’s colloquial meaning, if, in fact, there was one. It would do him little good to simply ask. Simcoe may have been his closest confidant, but their relationship was rather disproportional by nature. He needed Simcoe’s friendship far more than Simcoe needed his, and, for the moment, Simcoe seemed to need the friendship of the man whom on the receiving end of the series of text messages the ginger was shooting off like bullets.

“Hewlett won’t call Wankfield. Says that it’d be less of an embarrassment to lose with eight than to lose with nine.”

By _Wankfeild_ , the captain meant their teammate Wakefield, or, as an American in the same situation might put it, _Wakefuck_. This time Akinbode didn’t need to ask for a translation. “Should I have a go at it then?” he asked. Simcoe glanced to the side but gave no verbal response. Akinbode decided on an alternate course of action.

He took the two empty beer bottles sitting before them back to one of his former classmates to exchange for new ones. Anna Strong had been in his undergraduate program at NYU, had, like him, graduated _summa cum laude_ and had, like him, immediately thereafter pursued a law degree at Columbia. They had both graduated with like honors. Afterwards their paths differed. Akinbode had passed the bar on his first attempt. Anna was still working behind one. It had been two years. He had made junior partner at a prestigious firm. She had made cocktails. And none of it made sense.

A few months prior Anna had asked him to represent her in her divorce case. It wasn’t his branch but he agreed out of a possibly misplaced sense of guilt and gratitude. She e-mailed the required paperwork, flawlessly filled out, which he only needed to sign as a formality and print on his firm’s stationary to ensure that the proceedings would be swiftly addressed. He was appear in court on the coming Tuesday. The divorce was non-contested. In total, it would take 20 minutes of his time. 20 minutes he had come to resent her for. Anna knew everything there was to know about New York State Law. She was smarter and more capable than most of the partners at his firm. The bar wasn’t a problem in itself, but rather an excuse that had transformed into one, and not just for the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. Strong. College debt had killed her credit. Unable to get an apartment on her own and unwilling to move in with either of her parents, she had landed on his long-term girlfriend’s couch and seemed unmotivated to rise from these depths. And Abigail? She seemed to welcome the reason Jordan’s 10-year-plan had hit a set-back. By his calculations, or rather, expectations, Abigail would have been living with him in his brownstone by now and wearing a giant diamond at that, were it not for the charity she was doing the woman who had just handed him two bottles of Bud Light.

In short, Anna owed him. Much more than another round on the house.

“Can you take the afternoon off?” he asked.

“You know I am working a double.”

He did, for she had done so every Sunday that memory allowed for. He used this fact to further his next argument. “You need a break, and I need someone who can play left wing.”

“I haven’t played soccer in years.”

She hadn’t done much else either, Akinbode reasoned, but he didn’t bring this up. He didn’t need to.

“But you coach,” said Cicero, the son of the other bartender on duty. “You have your cleats in the car.”

Simcoe had recruited the help of the boy Akinbode hoped would one day be his step-son earlier that morning to their shared cause. He was surprisingly good with kids. Akinbode was good with mothers, this mother in particular, and had reassured her when she began to raise her concerns in the form of _don’t you think you ought to have checked with me first?_

“You about to ask your mom to cover for me then?” Anna asked. Cicero’s shoulder’s fell as he shot Jordan a look that said _I tried_.

“Close the bar for a few hours. It is not like you get a lot of afternoon traffic anyway, and the DeJong’s are still in Florida.”

Anna, ever the rebel, seemed to consider his preposition. “Isn’t that Andre’s position though? Or is he sick too?”

“Andre inn’t playin’,” a gruff voice from down the bar informed her. “Least not if your lot expects me to.”

“What we expect, Mr. Rogers, is that you honor your commitment to this club without regard to you dispute with one of its other members.” Simcoe said calmly as he appeared next to Akinbode, who had not heard him approach, taking one of the beers from his hand. Averting his attention, Simcoe asked “Am I to understand that you will be joining us, Mrs. Strong?”

Anna didn’t answer, but handed Simcoe a pen when he asked for one. He started marking up a coaster with assorted letters as he though aloud. “We’ll play Cicero up front with Jordan and move Andre to midfield with me. Anna – are you left or right footed?”

“Left.” Akinbode and Anna answered at once, with Akinbode adding that Anna had played left back in several international U20 matches as an undergrad.

Simcoe blinked in surprise and smiled at her in a way she didn’t respond warmly to. “I never knew that,” he said.

“It was a long time ago,” she replied, brushing off any sense of optimism Akinbode had hoped to inspire with her tone.

“Unfortunately Oyster is useless save as a defender so I’ll need to play you on the outside.”

Akinbode smiled the captain’s strategy seemed to concur with his own.

“Eastin and Joyce can switch if needed.”

“Yer going to need yerself a new keeper -” Rogers tried to interject.

“And what may I ask would make you say that?” Simcoe’s voice grew higher. If this wasn’t already a threat, Akinbode reasoned, it was about to become one.

At that very moment the bell attached to the door rang to signal its opening.

“It is because he is under the impression that I owe him money.” Andre informed the room. “I don’t.” he added flatly as he threw a half-empty bottle of lukewarm Irn Bru he had confiscated from Hewlett’s car. Rogers examined the contents of the bottle against Anna’s protests of no outside food or beverage. He assured her the soft drink could qualify as neither, said something to Hewlett in Gaelic and received a response in kind, lifted his head fully for the first time since he had arrived at opening and said “I’ll come to yer game, John.”

Akinbode didn’t know to which John Robert Rogers was referring (the one who had taken a seat next to him or the one who had resumed one of his numerous ongoing debates with the unfortunate foreign grad student who had just arrived) but the matter of starting without a full team seemed to be as settled as it was ever going to be. He thanked Anna, more from hoping to set a good example for Cicero than any sense of obligation. She owed him, after all.

Akinbode had no way of know this at the time, but later that afternoon, driving back to work after a defeat on the field, Anna would agree to paying a price far higher than one he personally would have set. It would result in several attempts at murder, a marriage, a divorce and a child born of sin and christened in his name.

It would make his legal career. And incidentally ruin hers before it had been given a fair start. But Anna wouldn’t be sleeping on Abigail’s couch for much longer.

 

* * *

 

 

They had been arguing since exchanging greetings. Since they had both woken up, if one were to take into account texting and social media into account.

Everyone thought he was being an asshole. He probably was, but not without good reason.

He had to keep this going.

But talking about maths after five beers was taxing, regardless of how committed one was to their cause.

It helped, of course, that on the topic of statistics, John Graves Simcoe really did fundamentally disagree with Edmund Hewlett. Hewlett was of the mind that statistics should not be considered mathematics at all, but rather as an attempt to numerically explain uncertainty. Simcoe acknowledged that the theorems used in his branch were of little interest to pure mathematicians, but refused to consent that it was pretentious to refer to a subject that made so much use of calculation as anything other than epistemology. Especially to someone whose work was purely theoretical in itself. More especially when said individual seemed to have a primitive need to always get the last word, no matter what the debate was about. Most especially when, eighteen days prior, said individual had made an attempt on his own life.

As far as he could tell, Simcoe was the only one who knew. Not that they had ever really talked about it. Not that there was all that much to say.

It had started as a joke the summer before. They had been at a restaurant in the city. A seafood restaurant. Simcoe had wanted to order oysters, Hewlett advised him in his approximation of a mother-knows-best tone that one ought not to eat raw shellfish in months containing the letter ‘u’ on the grounds of heath. Simcoe insisted that they wouldn’t be on the menu were that the case.

He ended up in hospital with severe food poisoning early the next morning.

Point for Hewlett.

Slightly embittered by the experience, he made sure that he listed Hewlett as his emergency contact. Hewlett received a call at 6 AM after a night of drinking.

Point for Simcoe.

When her arrived at hospital, after giving yet another lecture about how irresponsible Simcoe had been in his choice of appetizer (and receiving a nickname as a result) Hewlett had changed his emergency contact to Simcoe (it had been someone named Mary before – an ex? A classmate? A distant relative? Aside from Anna and Abigail at the bar neither of them really knew any women. Simcoe, for his part, didn’t have anyone listed prior to having the idea of inconveniencing his sometimes-friend.) Hewlett had said that he had made the change so that if he was ever to be murdered the policed would know who to investigate. Simcoe replied (without yet having any way to verify his words) that were he to ever kill someone, the police would never recover the body.

He smiled. Then Hewlett. It was uncommitted. But, Simcoe asked himself, aside from this _Mary_ whose very existence he had reason to question, who other than himself would Hewlett call in a calamity?

He wouldn’t admit it, but there wasn’t anyone Simcoe trusted more to show up in a crisis. In some rare occasions, Hewlett’s predictability could be considered reliability, and Simcoe was grateful for it. Which is why when he was called by the hospital two weeks ago, he left in the middle of a lunch meeting, knowing full well that the decision to do so would cost him somewhere in the low millions in stock options – so that he could be there when Hewlett woke up after having his stomach pumped. He found out form doctors that Hewlett had taken triple the recommended dose of a common benzodiazepine before attempting to defend his doctoral thesis. Failing to do so after making himself quite literally incapable of the task, he crushed a few more to ‘treat’ the panic attack he felt coming on. And then he had the sense to ring an ambulance before passing out in a public restroom.

As much as Simcoe had wanted to tell him what a fool he was, he knew it wouldn’t help the situation. So instead, after hours of waiting and investing all of his spare change in a machine that made the worst cup of tea he had ever had (he drank eight in total during his wait) Simcoe was there to argue about probability distribution when Hewlett woke up, confused, wondering where he was and why, in the name of all things holy, was the captain of his association football team there to make things worse.

Simcoe’s working theory (and it had worked thus far) was that as long as Hewlett was forced into the role of an intellectual autocrat, which he was, by nature, oh-so-comfortable playing, it would be less tempting for him to try and finish what he claimed before God and Simcoe and the unfortunate nurse who had been left with his discharge _not_ to have intentionally started. He had, after all, been the one to phone the ambulance.

In short, it matter very little to Simcoe when he was told to leave “poor Edmund” alone. He ignored them when they asked (as Abigail had the last time it was his turn to fetch a round from the bar) _“What has he ever done to you?”_

In part because the only answer that was his alone to give was _“He told me not to eat oysters in the summer and was right about it, and I resent him as a result.”_

The two had other intellectual differences Simcoe was keen to exploit as they presented themselves. Which they seemed to with relative and increasing frequency. Which he could express _mathematically_ were he to implement probability theory. An event _E_ can happen in _r_ ways out of a total of _n_ possible equally likely ways, let _E_ represent the probability of landing on a topic that will sufficiently aggravate Oyster, he thought. He had to keep this going. He realized his fingers were tapping. Filling the silence. The match was shite and he had let the conversation lapse.

He had to keep this going.

He took the pen he used to sketch the game plan and wrote P(E)= r/n on the opposite side of the same coaster. Hewlett saw it and shook his head. Simcoe gave him a wicked grin.

He had to keep this going. It had yet to occur to him that it was as much for his own sake as it was for Hewlett’s. It wouldn’t occur to him at all, in fact. He would be informed as much the following Thursday by Dr. Andre, and he would have to pay $250 to learn that he was lashing out as a means of coping with abnormal stress. Which was, of course, absolute rubbish.

Before the start of the second half he had mentioned that Anna Strong had been recruited to join their ranks. She had been semi-professional in her youth, and depending on how today's game went, Hewlett may have to surrender his preferred position to her. After all, Simcoe stated, he couldn’t give preferential treatment to defeatist.

“Anna Strong is playing?” Hewlett asked twice for clarification. “With us?”

He excused himself after twice receiving a slow nod of affirmation.

Simcoe waited a few minutes. Finding that it was increasingly impossible for him to keep his temper under control in a room full of Americans cheering for Man U under the pretense that the model H&M used in their underwear ads was still playing, and one fellow Brit who (although he likely knew the current roster) was making an embarrassment of the nation by carrying on in the same overblown fashion, he went to find the only person he knew on this (lesser) side of the pond who harbored a hatred of the Red Devils that rivaled his own.

Hewlett was in the bathroom. Hiding in the same stall that Simcoe had previously defaced in his name.

“You know they don’t even feature in the TV series. The Greyjoys.” Hewlett lamented.

Simcoe had no idea what he was talking about. Or if that had anything to do with Anna. Rather than confess to his ignorance, he changed the subject.

“Still nil-nil.”

“Ah.” Hewlett replied without interest.

He didn’t want to ask.

He didn’t want to know.

He _really_ didn’t want to have a heart to heart with a man he pretended for everyone’s benefit to loath beyond all measure in the gents at a dive bar. But against his better reason he asked “Alright then?” as casually as he could, half terrified that Hewlett had just crushed and swallowed some thirty odd pills.

“Can you keep a secret?”

Simcoe shrugged but closed the door behind him, keeping his hand on it lest he be forced to run back upstairs to fetch (and perhaps then kill) the good doctor. It was enough of an invitation for Hewlett to continue, and so, he did.

“Anna … ah, Mrs. Strong. It is just -”

Simcoe closed his eyes, waiting for the worse. The worst then being: given her predisposition towards short, skinny losers, made a pass at me, which cause me panic, short, skinny loser that I am.

Not, as Hewlett actually said: Andre suggested that I marry her for a Green Card. We had a bit of a row over it. I don’t want to bring her into a situation which I wish I wasn’t in myself.

“Then don’t,” Simcoe said simply before Hewlett could insert a conjunction.

Not that that stopped him.

Not that Simcoe had expected it to.

“I am tempted. To ask at the very least. I know her living situation isn’t ideal and I could offer an alternative. Plus some degree of financial incentive.”

“Do you hear yourself when you speak?” Simcoe asked in raised tones. Hewlett told him about his dissertation (the part between the two attempts at overdose which he continued to maintain were unintentional); about the timeline he was given for a second chance and the reaction of the ESA –

“And you think –given your circumstances- that you have something to offer someone else?”

“Platonically speaking.”

Hewlett went on to tell Simcoe -after swearing him to secrecy once more- that Andre had done the same thing years before. Simcoe wasn’t sure why this fact in itself surprised him. He had always suspected that man of questionable dealings (though to be fair, he suspected most people of the ills he failed to recognize as his own.) And his opinion had already been reduced due to the events of eighteen days ago – Hewlett was a fool, if Simcoe, a layman, could see that much, Dr. Andre, a trained professional - who incidentally Simcoe’s HR department insisted he entrust his own mental health to- ought to have seen that as well.

And yet he was, evidently suggesting a legally binding union between a woman whom Simcoe thought might just be the love of his life and a man who most certainly did not deserve the simple pleasure of her company.

He thought of a more delicate way to put it.

“Why don’t you just go home? Apply for a student visa and accept that you may have to wait until the following semester. It is not like the stars are going anywhere.”

“That is not … well, entirely accurate. The universe is constantly expanding.”

Simcoe took a long but shallow breath through clenched teeth, staring at Hewlett without blinking until the other man’s discomfort showed itself in his wide features.

“That is your logic?”

“It is a fact?” Hewlett seemed genuinely confused. Simcoe had had about all he could take.

Leaving Hewlett where he sat, Simcoe went upstairs, pulled Andre from his barstool and dragged him outside. He overheard Anna state that this was why the bar had a strict policy on insurance fees it demanded.  

 

* * *

 

 

“Nothing is broken.” Abigail confirmed, examining the fallen barstool.

“We will say there is and spilt the profits?” Anna suggested with a smiled. Abigail responded with a fist bump before reaching for Andre’s abandoned phone. A few of the pub’s patrons gathered at the window to watch the action outside.

“I am so sick of this shit,” Anna said. She counted. Fifteen. Plus two in the parking lot. She looked at the TV. 60:38. 60:39. “Has anyone seen Hewlett in the past half or so?” she asked to no response.

Abigail was enthralled with the same app that had been keeping Andre busy since he entered the bar, praising the signal he suddenly found himself back in range of. “Abby?”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God Annie, you need to read this!”

“Have you seen Hewlett?”

“Not since he came in, why?”

“Look, I’ll rock/paper/scissors you for who has to go down to the toilets to check if anything has been broken.”

“Anything or anyone?”

Anna rolled her eyes. “I hate match day,” she said as she placed her left fist into her right palm and pounded it three times. Abigail mirrored the motion, unclenching her fist in the end whilst Anna’s stayed shut. She reached back for the phone. Anna turned around with a sigh.

“Hey. Hi!” she said to the man who had just finished walking up from the basement.

“Hello.” Hewlett responded cautiously.

“Is anything broken? Besides the sink. We know about the sink.”

Hewlett blinked, still unsure what was happening. “The American higher education system in its entirety?” he ventured.

Anna thought about it for a moment. “Yeah. That’s fair. Beer?”

She brought him a cider instead when he asked for one.

“So I hear you will be joining us this afternoon.”

“Um.” Anna wasn’t sure how to respond. She wanted to play with people her own age, certainly, but hadn’t actually agreed to do so before the captain put her name on the roster. Part of her had been afraid to object.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Abigail interjected. “I’ll make you a deal. Go, keep an eye out for my boy. I’ll cover for you here. Tonight if you could just – I know you were planning on studying but- could you also maybe keep an eye out for Cicero? Jordan wants to take me out.”

Anna smiled and agreed, stating that anything she could do to repay Abigail’s kindness was -. But Abigail cut her off. “No. Just this.”

Anna turned around to Hewlett again – who introduced himself as Edmund. And smiled at her for the first time.

 

* * *

 

 

Outside Simcoe shoved Andre. They argued. In hushed tones. Knowing they had attracted an audience. Andre defended his proposal the same way he had to Hewlett when he had gotten self-righteous about his position. Simcoe dealt deeper blows. Said that he had never considered Andre particular capable (who forms a football team primarily out of people under ongoing anger management therapy?) But he really needed to leave Hewlett out of whatever scheme he was working on. Andre said he was trying to help out a few of his friends. And then Simcoe said it. Aloud. For the first time. To anyone. “Hewlett tried to kill himself. He tried bloody well take his own life with a weapon you prescribed. You enabled him.” Andre replied that Simcoe only had a pale grasp on the situation. He, on the other hand, was very much aware what was going on with each and every one of his patients.

Simcoe had his doubts. But thought it was best not to act on them further. They were already down two players. And he had to wear the band of captaincy in less than 40 minutes.

 

* * *

 

 

They lost 3-2 and only because Anna was every bit as brilliant on the pitch as Akinbode had built her up to be.

After the match Simcoe drove back to the bar with Akinbode, Cicero and Joyce. Rogers had dipped out before they had gone back to the locker room to change, dodging a tab he had left open. Andre and Eastin carpooled back to the city after they had taken quick showers. Anna had been given her own changing room. Simcoe had tried to look for Hewlett after borrowing antifungal cream from a player on the other team for him. (Hewlett had the worst case of athlete’s foot any of their number had ever seen – which somehow he managed to blame on Simcoe on the grounds that he had gotten it when they were going to the gym together in the mornings. This had given Simcoe pause for that had started around New Year and ended shortly thereafter. How long had he had it? Didn’t it itch? Why hadn’t he purchased a remedy? Was he planning to cut his toes off? And how was Simcoe responsible for the fact that he had forgotten flip-flops for the locker room? Some people.)

When he couldn’t find him, he saw that Anna’s car was missing and new without searching further that Hewlett was with her. Nothing seemed out of sorts when he met them back at the pub. Until he asked Anna to become a permanent member of the team. She consented. There was a toast. Anna and Hewlett said “to us” as everyone else had, but this was different. They were looking each other in the eyes. They were smiling.

Simcoe felt sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope and pray that no one young and impressionable is reading this fic. Contradicting that last statement, here is a ton of notes, many of which deal with some pretty dark themes you’ve just encountered:
> 
> -“Is that British slang?” / “Not … quite in this context.”: The third definition of “oyster” is “a closemouthed or uncommunicative person, especially one who keeps secrets well.” Does it fit Hewlett? I can’t quite decide, and you?
> 
> \- Wankfeild / Wakefuck: Oh how I love a good name based pun. So here is one that didn’t make it into the final cut … he has the Wakeflu. :)
> 
> \- summa cum laude: With the highest honors
> 
> \- international U20 matches: All the players are under 20 years old.
> 
> \- “Unfortunately Oyster is useless save as a defender so I’ll need to play you on the outside.”: defenders are so under appreciated. Please go out and hug your back line.
> 
> \- Irn Bru: a Scottish soft drink. It tastes like cotton candy and it is awesome. Chase with vodka, because that mess is sweet as ----
> 
> \- Is statistics truly a branch of mathematics or would it be better classified as a science?: We could talk about this all day. I cut a lot out but if you have an opinion or want more of an explanation of either or both sides of the argument hit me up on Tumblr or in the comments. 
> 
> \- one ought not to eat raw shellfish in months containing the letter ‘u’: Fact. Just don’t.
> 
> \- benzodiazepines: Minor tranquilizers that act against anxiety. Sedative. Highly addictive and commonly misused.
> 
> \- P(E)= r/n: Definition of Probability
> 
> \- Americans cheering for Man U under the pretense that the model H&M used in their underwear ads was still playing: David Beckham retired in 2013. He last played for Man U in 2003. This might well be insulting so some of you, but the last time I was in the s-tates (for all of four days) I met a lot of people who didn’t know this. (But by that token ask me or any other average European to name one single American Football (the egg-shaped one) player. Nope. Drawing a blank.)
> 
> \- “You know they don’t even feature in the TV series. The Greyjoys.”: I mean I don’t know. They might now. I stopped watching when the show over took the books. Optimist that I am and all. But this was a cheap reference to a previous chapter.
> 
> \- crushed pills: can be absorbed quicker. Alcohol also has this effect. So please, please, please if you dear reader are on any kind of medication whatsoever take as instructed.
> 
> Did I forget anything? Do be so kind as to let me know. Comments and kudos are always cool to get, but sometimes as hassle to give, and if you are just not in the mood trust me when I say we have all been there. I’m just happy that you took the time to read this mess. Thanks, as always! Hope to see your lovely faces again soon! Till then, XOXO.
> 
> Up Next: Everybody Talks


	4. The Courtship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The former poster child of the Pro-Life Movement considers the ethics of spying on a functional alcoholic and his dysfunctional friends whilst her roommate falls in love with one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teen pregnancy, state politics, childhood trauma, and vaguely written female masturbation. Enjoy!

 

Abigail had been homeless for 10 days before she finally got an appointment at the free clinic. Her mother had kicked her out when she found out she was pregnant. She was fifteen.

Before finding herself with a rucksack full of clothes and nowhere to turn, she had made up her mind to have an abortion. Loneliness changed it. She found herself in a staring contest with the volunteer OB-GYN when she spoke the words that would permanently alter the course of her life.

“If it weren’t for your husband’s legislation, I would have been able to purchase contraceptives. Now this baby is my _only_ family. Of course I am not seeking an abortion out of state.”

She had the incredible luck that Dr. Margret Shippen’s youngest daughter had overheard her outburst. Of course, what Peggy heard was not the cutting criticism that Abigail had intended, but rather part of a commercial that would soon be run state-wide. Her father was up for reelection, after all. He seemed to have been in a constant campaigning cycle since her birth. Her mother’s very presence at the free clinic was due entirely to the recommendations of one of her father’s advisors. Peggy was there with the camera crew. It was what she knew.

Abigail had smiled for the camera as she gleefully said “If it weren’t for Governor Shippen’s legislation, contraception would have killed my family.” She smiled at various speaking events, including the time she was interviewed by the local Fox-affiliate. She had no reason not to. The Shippen’s were paying all of her medical expenses. She was living in their home.

Later, she would discover that the other people who had been in that particular series of ads had been paid far more by a special-interest group than all of the care that Abigail received was worth, if one were to put a dollar value on it. By that point in her life, it made no difference to Abigail whatsoever. The friendships she had forged with the Shippen sisters while living with them were worth more to her than any amount of cash.

She really had incredible luck.

She would have lived with the family until she finished high school, had she, in fact, finished high school. After she had given birth a month early, possibly to coincide with a rally being held in the governor’s honor, she had decided to leave that world behind as soon as opportunity would allow. The baby had been taken from her before she had had a chance told hold him. She couldn’t be certain from her hospital bed, but she had a sinking suspicion that there was already a reporter taking pictures of the child in his incubator. The next morning her fears would play out on local news. By then she would already have a plan of escape.

She had seen the commercials for online universities before, but never paid them much mind. The first three times the ad telling her and whomever else happened to be watching _History of Rome_ at 2 AM on a channel that would later keep the same name but would only air documentaries about blue-collar workers in Alaska, she ignored them. The fourth time she decided that becoming a medical billing specialist might not be such a bad idea after all.

She wrote down the number, and closed her eyes. When she woke up the next morning to a room full of excited Shippens and their yes-men, she had made her decision. And decided on a name for her baby; Cicero.

 

* * *

 

The course took nine months to complete. After Cicero’s first birthday, Abigail moved her small family - impossible save for the ban on contraceptives that had since been overturn- to New York City where she had found a full time job. She was seventeen. In the years to come she would advance to the position Administrative Head. If her life had gone according to its original plan, she would have graduated from high school in a month after originally taking the position. She considered sometimes her life wouldn’t have gone much beyond that. She certainly wouldn’t have as much reason to fight for a better future. Eventually, she imagined, she would have ended up like her mother, under educated, under employed, and unwilling to do anything about it.

Abigail lived in the city for two years before moving to Long Island when Cicero started preschool. It was there that she met several pre-law students, including the one who worked at the only bar in the small town of Setauket, who would in short time become one of her best friends, and the handsome man she was arguing with about a national minimum wage, who would later become her significant other.

She was Anna’s maid-of-honor. She was also the first person Anna called when her husband was arrested for a minor possession change, when he elected to serve in the US Navy for two years instead of going to prison for three; the first person she called when Selah had decided to enlist after his conscription had ended; the first person she called when he came back from Iraq with a girl named Najma (who, as it would turn out, had been born and raised in Trenton and was serving as his CO); and ultimately the first person she called when it was clear that they would be unable to reconciled their differences and spilt.

Abigail offered her home to Anna as she herself had been offered a home when she needed one. She liked having her around. She was the only person who Abigail had ever truly trusted with her son.

That is, of course, until the day Anna Strong excitedly told her the latest mistake in a series that Abigail was stating to believe were by-design. Two days prior to her divorce being finalized, Anna had agreed to marry a man whom Abigail knew from the waiting room of her employers’.

She worked at a psychiatric clinic.

 

* * *

 

Their first date started out disastrously. After Anna’s inaugural training with her new soccer team (another decision she was beginning to regret), the pair had gone to a Barnes and Nobel nearby at her suggestion. She had wanted to grab coffee, he had alternate plans. For a while the walked through the rows of bookshelves in silence, occasionally picking up works with interesting covers, making private judgements at each other’s taste. Anna decided after fifteen minutes that Edmund probably though himself smarter than her and was probably correct in his assessment. She had never heard of half of the things that seemed to warrant his interest. When she would pick up a book for herself, her selection would be met with an “Ah.” or “Hm.” as if her preference for popular literature told him everything he needed to know about her. As if he somehow disapproved. Without knowing why, Anna saw this as a challenge. Without knowing why, she hoped to show off. She walked over to the classics and chose the most impressive looking book she saw, flipping through it as if she understood the Latin text. “Meus ventus!” he smiled. “Salve,” she replied with the single word she recalled from high school. Hewlett looked skeptical, than pleased, then curious. “You … understand Latin then?” he asked. Without waiting for her to reply he told her he thought that was brilliant. Anna smiled uncomfortably as he purchased the book for her.

Afterwards, when they were having coffee and a light but overpriced dinner in the book store’s café, Anna flipped through the pages trying desperately to remember more of something she hadn’t used in twelve years. Edmund, meanwhile, spoke about his love of Ovid, his favorite passages, what certain verses meant to him and framed his understanding of the thematic tension between art and nature. Anna hadn’t gotten anywhere close to being able to read ancient texts in school. She had barely mastered the verb congregations, and the vocabulary was lost on her. She was keen to listen however. She had never met someone who spoke the way he did. She mentioned this when he asked for her opinion, using the words _odd_ , _first_ and _date_ casually in her response.

“Date?” Hewlett replied, slightly flustered. “Ah … Anna it has always been my intention to keep matters between us, well … platonic, as it were.”

“Platonic,” Anna repeated slowly. If she was wondering if he truly thought her a fool, she was about to have her question answered.

“Platonic, er, yes. Deriving its name from Plato -” He stopped short as he noticed her glare. “Ah, Mrs., rather, Miss Strong now I suppose, I apologize if-”

“Platonic?” she repeated for a second time. “You honestly think that I don’t know the root or the definition of _platonic_?”

“I … no, no. I merely hoped to indulge my interest in philosophy. I … rather hoped you might share it. If I insulted you in any way, I ask humbly for your pardon.”

Anna looked down at the book with the words she couldn’t understand and back up at the man who seemed set on patronizing her. She wanted to leave. She confessed that she had taken two years of Latin in high school because she thought it would be easier to meet her graduation requirement with a dead language than a living one. To this Hewlett smiled. He had also originally chosen Latin to avoid ever having to speak it. And then Anna smiled. He bought them both another round of coffee and a round after that. They stayed until closing. By the time the teenage barista who had steamed milk for them all night ever so politely told the pair that it was time to go, Anna no longer wanted to.

 

* * *

 

“Platonic?” Abigail repeated after Anna told her the story two weeks later. Hearing the word in her best friend’s mouth didn’t make it sound any better. “Jesus.” She shook her head before stretching it as far back as she could. “I can’t work with this.”

Anna had asked Abigail to write her an affidavit stating that she and Edmond had been in a long-term relationship prior to his impromptu proposal. What Abigail evidently heard was _I give you permission to use my relationship to further your armature artistic endeavors._

Abigail thought that the marriage plot was the most intriguing story line she would ever play any kind of role in and felt compelled to write a fictional account of it for her blog. Anna thought that Abigail had stories of her own worth telling. She had been saying as much since the first time the two of them had gotten properly wasted together and Abigail had told her the epic tale of how she used her teenage pregnancy to influence the outcome of a gubernatorial election. Abigail had shrugged then, as she did now. “Things are just less interesting when they are happening to you.”

Anna had to agree. Still, she initially took issue with the idea of Abigail writing a story about her -dare she say _love life_? – knowing that as with all of Abigail’s stories, it was bound to be published online sooner or later. Fearing that someone at the US Immigration and Naturalization Services would one day find it and connect the dots back to Edmund and herself, she had asked that the setting might be changed accordingly. Abigail had agreed immediately. Anna was a mess. She was the inspiration for much of her best friend’s fiction. There was no reason why her “epic romance” would cease to be epic if the particulars were changed.

“An arranged marriage,” Abigail tapped her pen on the kitchen table. “A young divorcee and a brilliant scientist. Maybe you’re spies. And it is set during the Revolutionary War or something. And you are on opposite sides but fall in love anyway.”

“One, you really, really need to take the Hamilton CD out of your car. It has been months. Two, if Edmund and I go to immigration with a story like that they are going to say the same thing.”

“About Hamilton?”

Anna hoped to get the conversation back on track. Abigail was meant to be penning Anna’s affidavit, not her next novel. As much as Anna wanted this part of her life to remain secret, as much as she was loath to talk about her odd courtship, she needed Abigail to be crafting the story she asked her to write for the benefit of the court; the story that she would soon be telling the court when they set a date.

“Or maybe you are a rebel spy and he is a British officer.”

“Can’t see it.”

“And why is that?”

“For one he is Scottish, not English.”

“Untied since 1707. Just saying.”

Anna found herself wondering what Abigail did all day at her nine-to-five. Her own job paid little but demanded a great deal of her mental energy. Abigail, on the other hand, had a well-paying job that seemed to leave her with plenty of time to Google random facts. That, or she simply had a mind for them. “Oh my God, we would rock pub trivia if we were allowed to play.”

“There are other bars you know.”

Anna jumped into her usual excuses about how she couldn’t take time off right now, suspecting that Abigail could see through her lies without ever acknowledging their existence.

She gave Anna a skeptical look.

“Go on about Edmund. Sorry.”

Anna feared that she would go on for days if given the chance.

“He is …” she stopped, blushing. “Okay, don’t judge me on this alright? He is like a gentleman from a Regency-Era novel. The kind of guy you actually want to spend more time with. Not because he is fun, or even all that handsome from most angles - and God there are too many in his face alone- but because he is interesting. And interested. In literally everything but me.”

“Sounds like he’s gotten some dating advice from Andre.” Abigail responded in referenced to her boss whose game strategy they had both seen many fall victim to before.

“Could be.” Anna allowed herself a moment to hope this were the case. She knew they ran in the same circles, but there was something different. Edmund was too honest. “Or not. He seems so genuine. You should see the way his face lights up when he talks about the things he loves. He has read everything and can hold his own in a discussion or debate once it gets going. But he seems all at once … I am not sure. Reserved. But not in a cold way. Not at all. I wish … that we had met under different circumstances. That he saw me as more than a means to an end. I mean, there is some comfort in the certainty of it. But I wish it was with someone else.”

“Who?”

“No one in particular. With Edmund it just seems like there could be more there.”

“What exactly makes you think he is not interested?”

 

* * *

 

She was glad for the panel of glass separating her from the patients. It was for her own safety, mostly to serve as protection from the mother of troubled teens who suddenly found themselves equally troubled when Abigail was forced to explain that their insurance was refusing to cover the cost of more than six visits. But she could deal with screaming customers. After all, she moonlighted at a sports bar at the weekend in order to help pay her son’s private school tuition. Hysteria was easy. Hard, in contrast was calm. And John Graves Simcoe was far too calm for her liking.

He looked at her, unblinking, as she examined the monthly appointment schedule.

“Dr. Howe is not currently accepting new patients,” she advised, hoping he wouldn’t note the slight crack in her voice, “and Dr. Clinton doesn’t have an opening prior to March 6th.”

“Then I should rather like to take it.”

“It is at 10 AM,” she said, hoping to dissuade him from his decision.

“No matter.” Simcoe replied, his blank face making a momentary shift into a slight smile.

“Do you want to keep your appointments with Dr. Andre until then?”

Simcoe shook his head. “I fear that attempting to obtain medical care from someone whom I see socially serves neither of our interests.”

Abigail nodded as she wrote the date of the appointment on a business card. This was the second time she had heard as much in the past two weeks, and she knew that this wouldn’t be the last of it. After office hours, or perhaps before, Dr. Clinton would certainly have something to say about the matter as he had on previous occasions.

Simcoe thanked her and wished her a pleasant remainder of her afternoon.

When his back was turned, Abigail nodded at one of her subordinates and walked into the breakroom to make a telephone call.

 

* * *

 

“Can you pick up Cicero after school?”

“Andre off the wagon again?”

Abigail wished that her boyfriend held her favorite boss in higher esteem.

“Can you?”

“Wait.”

She heard Jordan put her palm over the receiver, muffling the sound of him talking to whomever was in his office, likely an underpaid paralegal being given an impossible assignment. She felt herself hoping it was Falkoff, noting the hypocrisy in the fact that she had strong, possibly unwarranted opinions of a few his co-workers as well.

“It won’t be a problem,” he paused, “do you want me to … do anything with him afterwards?”

Abigail could hear the awkwardness in his voice as he asked and knew it to be of her making. She had been on a few dates with Jordan before mentioning that she had a son, surprised that the then college-student’s interest in her hadn’t abruptly ended as experience had told her it would. They went on a few more dates before she let him meet her boy. As Cicero grew from toddler to preteen Jordan was the only father figure he had known. But he wasn’t Cicero’s father, as Abigail reminded her boyfriend each time her felt comfortable enough to offer his opinion on anything pertaining to Cicero’s upbringing. She knowingly pushed him away time and time again. It wasn’t that she considered him a bad influence, or entertained any kind of fantasy that he didn’t have her boy’s best interest at heart. The fact remained, however, that Cicero had already been abandoned by one father prior to his birth. Though Jordan Akinbode had proven time and time again that he bore no resemblance to the confused Philadelphia teenager who had lost her number after giving her a child, the tension remained.

“Just make sure he does his homework. He may need help with math or science.”

“Should I …wait?”

“No. I am not sure when I will get home. If you don’t mind -”

“I don’t. Not at all.”

When the conversation was finished, Abigail was intensely proud of herself for allowing the man whom she planned to spend the rest of her life with to share in her life. It was a small step, but a step nonetheless.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t just that Edmund had said platonic, it was that he’d meant it. Maybe it was that Anna was used to having drinks bought for her, maybe it was because she hadn’t really been seeing anyone in so long that she had forgotten the taste of rejection, but it left her feeling broken and bitter every time he left without the slightest nod towards intimacy.

She thought about him when she touched herself. Her fingers were as timid as he seemed to be. She hadn’t showered. She never did when she got home shortly before sun rise. Exhausted, she unfolded her blanket and laid on Abigail’s couch, imagining the man who had walked her home, carrying the flowers and chocolate and other tokens he had purchased for the sake of appearances.

She liked him.

She like the fantasy of the packaged romance. The roses and truffles and cards that he signed with only his initials. She liked playing along. She wondered how much of it would have been a game to her were it not for the things he seemed to do with increasing abundance and without forethought. Things that were more him than his three-year-plan. Anna only had one night off each week, Tuesdays, half of which she spent coaching Cicero, half of which she was now obligated to spend with her new team. She wanted to get to know him, but couldn’t take two nights off. Not now. Edmund, thankfully, never asked why. He never said _you work at a bar_ as if this were an insult or something that she ought to be ashamed of. Instead, he made an effort to see her. He started coming to the tavern during the week, he would have a beer and then he would start working. He said he had to keep himself busy. She looked at his soft hands and wondered how they capable of performing the kinds of manual tasks he had given to himself. He fixed the bathroom sink, repaired a hole in the wall, and fixed one of the lights.

He said that engineering majors always get on physics majors for their lack of practical knowledge. But that is simply not the case as he was more than keen to demonstrate. He talked about school a lot. He had been living alone in one sort of dormitory or another for more than twenty years. Anna, in contrast, had never lived by herself. She was raised in a two-parent home, then, when they spilt before her senior year in order that their daughter qualify for more federal financial aid, she went to live with her father. As a freshmen she had shared a dorm room with a girl named Mary, with whom she had also rented a small apartment sophomore year before Mary disappeared as a result of (Anna assumed) having found God or something equally as embarrassing. She moved in briefly with another friend named Caleb before wedding Selah. After they split she lived with her mother for a few weeks and was quickly reminded of why she had chosen to live with her dad after her parent’s fake divorce, which had turned into a real divorce sometime along the way. She had since been living with Abigail for a little over a year. And soon she would be living with Edmund. Who seemed to want her around but never seemed to want to be in the same room.

Her friends sometimes asked if she felt smothered, having him at the bar at least three nights a week and at least once at the weekend. No, she’d answer honestly. For the most part he seemed lost in his own devices. They would exchange pleasantries and the occasional gift. Once she had kissed him on the cheek when his timing had saved her from a conversation with Simcoe she didn’t really have time for when she would otherwise have been taking inventory. Hewlett had taken a step back, mumbled something, and then chatted with their mutual acquaintance about the sorts of things that Anna guessed were only interesting to emigrants with trust funds back home.

She though a lot afterwards about his reaction.

Until something small changed between them.

After he finished making repairs he’d deemed necessary in the tavern’s kitchen, he started cooking in it. They would eat after her shift ended. He was embarrassed when she would complement him. Once the night was warm and clear, he made a picnic on the rooftop and moved it down to the unlit back parking lot when she froze on the fire escape, confessing to him that she was afraid of heights. He smiled and said he was afraid of everything, she had no reason to be ashamed. Not in his presence.

Edmund pointed out all of the stars in the sky as the munched on the contents of a care package she imagined he had artfully arranged before she forced him to change his plans. Anna couldn’t visualize the constellations, but she could now make connections to a few of the myths she read in _Metamorphoses_ , with the assistance, of course, of an online translator. He was impressed. She thought he would kiss her. She thought that she wanted him to.

Alas. Edmund Hewlett maintained that he wanted to keep things _platonic_. He was good at acting, the whole town seemed to thing he had feelings for her. Anna wondered why she allowed herself to believe in his lies as well, knowing them for what they were. She felt as comforted by the lies he told for his own benefit as she felt comforted by her own. If they were in love, then what she was doing was not so horrible. At least, that is what she told herself.

Her fingers were suddenly sticky and wet as she thought about him. She moaned his name softly. What if someone came downstairs? Was she acting now for someone's benefit?

 

* * *

 

They talked about everything and nothing. She found out that he had been sent to boarding school when his parents were having problems, had done his A-levels early and immediately thereafter enrolled in St. Andrews. She asked if he was a genius. “All genius is gone by the third year, I am afraid,” he smiled. Sadly. He had been a student all his life and now he wasn’t. Anna wondered if he would have felt equally as lost and confused had he obtained his post-doctorate. She felt like she would be nothing without the bar she had been working in since she was twenty-one and managing since she was twenty-three; the same way everyone seemed to feel that she was nothing standing behind it. Edmund not. He said he liked it there. Friendly patrons, cheap imports, hot staff. Anna blushed. “Oh, no, I meant Caleb” he said dryly. She smiled. After that she spent a lot more time looking in the mirror, wondering if she had gained too much weight after giving up smoking. Wondering if he preferred blonds, or perhaps boys, or if it was only books that really intrigued him.

“You need to tell him” Abigail said one Sunday morning.

“What?”

“You are so full of shit, Anna.”

 

* * *

 

John Andre was past the point of hiding that he was using clear liquor to clear his mind. Abigail wondered how many shots he had had in the past hour, but if she had to judge by his gait she would estimate that the number was around five. Clinton, she noted thankfully, was not looking at him, but rather at Simcoe’s charts and medical history. Abigail wished she wasn’t in the room.

“I simply misjudged the situation.”

“It is not a simple matter when a patient nearly died.”

Andre closed his eyes. Abigail was happy when Dr. Clinton asked her to get another file from the cabinet.

It took her a moment to find the one he had requested, forgetting that the patient in question had been moved from “current” to “former.” Easy mistake. She saw enough of him these days.

It wasn’t her business. She knew it was an infringement on physician-patient privilege, but she also knew, surrounded by lawyers in her private life, that no charges could be brought against her in the state of New York. As she walked back to the conference room, she read the last three pages of notes in Hewlett’s file. She had been working at the firm for nearly ten years. From what she understood of mental health care, which, she reckoned, was quite a lot, Andre had not, as he claimed, misjudged the situation at all. What she found surprising was that he seemed to have done nothing about it before letting it get out of hand. She removed a page from the file, folded it, and placed it into her back pocket before re-entering the meeting and giving the rest of the file to the man who had requested it.

By that time Dr. Howe had joined the discussion.

“Do you think it wise to socialize with your patients?”

“You fail to understand how that class behaves. Trust isn’t earned, it is financed.”

“This is the Upper East Side, Andre. Everyone here has means and name recognition.”

“Yes, but they are American.” Andre said, stressing the last word.

“That is rather ironic,” Clinton muttered without looking up from the charts he was comparing. “Do you suppose that patient Simcoe understands the extent to which patient Hewlett’s condition parallels that of his mother’s death?”

“I have reason to doubt it. Simcoe confessed to me previously that he never read the full damage report on Pakistan. As you’ll note if you look back to my notes from July 2013, it seems rather unlikely that he knew the extent of his mother’s condition either, and I should think it very unlikely that he sought out any answers at a later date.”

Clinton flipped through to the corresponding page and followed along.

“Have you in any way encourage him to do so?” Howe asked.

“I have not. I am of the mind that little good can come from it.”

“And yet Simcoe seems to have made a connection between the prescriptions his mother was taking and those you prescribed to Hewlett.” Clinton interjected.

“As you may also note, sir,” Andre’s voice grew hard, “I did not write the original prescription, and if you will refer to the charts I have been steadily reducing the dosage since accepting him under my care.”

Clinton nodded. Abigail noted that he hadn’t looked up from the files throughout the entire course of the meeting.

“I wish you would have come to me with this sooner.”

“I wish you would check your email. I requested your advice on the matter back in December.”

“Do not attempt to put this on me, John.”

Andre was silent for the rest of the meeting. Clinton grew increasingly annoyed that the research Andre had been doing for the past three years was amounting to what he called _very little_. Howe was concerned that Andre’s behavior was reflecting negatively on the practice. Abigail was relieved when they asked her to make a pot of coffee.

It would make it easier to get Andre into her car.

 

* * *

 

“Cultural relativity, love,” he said.

“Be that as it may I am not letting you walk to the nearest bar.”

“I’m lucky to have you, you know.”

“I do.”

After putting him in the passenger’s seat Abigail got into her own vehicle but didn’t start the ignition. They sat in silence in the now-empty parking garage until Andre finally asked if she intended to bring him home or not.

“We need to talk,” she replied.

Andre nodded. “Of course I am not alright.”

“Not about you.”

“Oh?”

Abigail took a deep breath and handed him the paper she had been sitting on. Andre blinked. “You can read this?”

“I will remind you that I have been working for the practice since before you obtained your American accreditation,” she paused. When Andre was not forthcoming with a counter she continued, reminding herself with each word that she was speaking to one of her bosses and not to her son, “I want to know why you are pushing this relationship between Anna and Edmund. I want to know if he is a threat to her.”

“No you don’t. That isn’t what worries you,” Andre replied with an air of perfected nonchalance.

“I’ll admit that part of my concern stems from that fact that Anna is a large enough part of Cicero’s life that he calls her his aunt as he does with the Shippen sisters. As he calls you his uncle.”

“No, you are not worried about that either. Hewlett is and has never been a threat to anyone but himself. Through I suppose your extensive knowledge of human psychology would tell you as much.”

Abigail blinked. Andre continued, “What you are worried about is your relationship with Anna falling apart after you move to Brooklyn next month. It won’t. Neither of you would ever allow that to happen. Hewlett isn’t replacing you, Abby. His relationship with Anna is, how to put this -”

“Illegal. She has asked me to write and affidavit and a plausible backstory. I know.”

“Artificial, would be the term I would use.”

“That is the thing though, I have a feeling that it isn’t for her.”

“I’ve never spoken to Miss Strong in any kind of professional capacity so my evaluation may -”

“John,” Abigail swallowed, “I think there is something that you need to know about Anna Strong.”

 

* * *

 

Abigail pulled Anna into the back office and told her what she had overheard at work. At her real job. Implying that Anna’s job wasn’t real. Hewlett suffered from anxiety and depression. Did she know that? She did. Did she know that he had tried to kill himself only weeks before? She did not.

“Do you think you can fix him?” Abigail asked.

“He isn’t broken.”

And then she knew what Abigail had known for weeks. She was in love with him. She went into the bathroom and cried. She was overwhelmed.

Because he loved her too.

Platonically, of course.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a lot more that I wanted to include this week, but I figured it would be more fun to leave you guys wondering what exactly Anna is hiding. No spoilers or anything but you won’t find out next week in what will essentially amount to an incredibly wordy Sim-chapter, catching us back up with the events that played out in the very beginning (or so I hope!)
> 
> Since most of the cultural references I made this week were American, for the first time since putting pen to paper I don’t have that many notes for you. (But if you have notes for my Euro-ass please, please, please don’t hesitate to comment. I am sure my understanding isn’t perfect.)
> 
> Anyway, translations:  
> ... when he [Selah] came back from Iraq with a girl named Najma…  
> \- Najma means “Stars” in Arabic simply because I love poetic irony. Selah falls in love with Stars and later Anna falls in love with someone who is also in love with stars and that is just beautiful.
> 
> “Meus ventus!” he smiled. “Salve,” she replied with the single word she recalled from high school.  
> \- “My favorite” and “Hello”, respectively.
> 
> As always thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Up Next: Robert Townsend drops a mix tape (and a bomb)


	5. The Slow Procession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna moves in with Hewlett, Simcoe can’t find parking, Andre stands up his date, Mary drives into a public figure.
> 
> (… and Peggy!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Short, slightly misogynistic discussion of masturbation preferences and sexual tendencies, severe childhood trauma with psychological and physiological aftermath, heartbreak, rejection, day drinking, various scattered references to modern politics and policy (as well as allusions to events that played out on the international stage in the late 90s), marital problems, auto accidents, bar fights over really explosive topics. 
> 
> (This is a long update!)
> 
> And I’m not going to lie, I happen to think it is a pretty sad one, but probably (hopefully!) not for the same reasons you might. Not to get too personal, but I know what it is to lose one’s parents at a young age and the far-reaching effects something like that can have on an individual. Obviously this is way more dramatic, but writing it I kind of felt surprised that some of these implied thoughts came so easily to the forefront of my mind. So … general trigger warning for adults who were once orphans, I guess? 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!

“Happy We’re-Not-Acknowledging-What-Day-It-Is,” Hewlett had said as he handed over a CD which had been given to him moments before. He had given him a card earlier. Simcoe had fiddled with the envelope, tapping it against the table until the corners were blunted. He hadn’t opened it. He never would.

“Are you sure you don’t want this?” he asked, finding it difficult to suppress a smile. Earlier in the evening both of his dining companions had admitted with some degree of self-satisfaction that they knew the maître d' of the unimpressive bistro which had somehow acquired the status over the past few months of being the only place to be seen eating in New York. The cuisine was uninspired, the service lackluster, and the man in question among the most boring Simcoe had ever encountered, that is, until learning that he happened to play in a garage band with Caleb Brewster and Abe Woodhull.

“No. I’ve heard most of the tracks already and have little interest in the rest of the album. It might be something for you though.”

Andre raised his eyebrows, “I wasn’t aware that you had any familiarity with the genre. Do you have a secret nightlife we know nothing about?”

“Ah … no, no. My nights are as dull as you imagine them to be. The band, one of my housemates is in it. They practice directly under my flat sometimes. Less often of late. I never say anything about the noise because I am all but nocturnal as it is, thusly young people seem to find me cool.”

“No one thinks of you as cool. Don’t flatter yourself.” Simcoe’s eyes glazed the back of the album cover falling flat on the series of words that might prove fatal to the course of action he had been attempting to dissuade Hewlett from taking since the very instant he’d first approached the topic. “Culper Ring. The street you live on. That is the band’s name.”

“Yes?”

Simcoe read the names on the back cover several times over.

“Woodhull. You live with Abe Woodhull who lives at home, meaning that you rent from Richard Woodhull.”

“Sorry, were you taking this somewhere?”

“You can’t move Anna in to that place.”

Hewlett looked confused.

“Have you never read the William Smith article about Judge Woodhull that came out during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, basically eliminating his chance of appointment?” he asked condescendingly. He hadn’t heard of the piece himself before Anna had mentioned several years back that her father had won a Pulitzer. After Abe had said something which had acquainted his face with Simcoe’s right fist for the first time. He recreated the scene for his two dining companions with a cold poetic flourish, not ignoring the fact that Abe and Anna had once been a couple, and had split over the publication of an article that was still read widely enough that it was the third result when one googled the Woodhull name; something which he was glad demonstrated. Hewlett was horrified, Andre intrigued. The former excused himself from the table to phone his fiancé. A few minutes later he returned for his jacket, promising to settle his share of the cheque when next they met.

For a few hours after the conversation had taken place, Simcoe had allowed himself to hope that the ridiculous Green Card scam had fallen through after all.

Then he received a text stating that the move was still on. That Hewlett would tell him about what had happened in the morning. Simcoe sincerely hoped he wouldn’t.

 

* * *

 

The music was every bit as awful as he had anticipated it would be. The first time it was an amusing hate-listen. The second time the album played in full on the stereo of his Land Rover, he had taken some enjoyment from the fact that the mixture of post-punk guitar riffs blaring at 110 decibels and the copious amount of alcohol which Andre had consumed the night prior seemed to be causing him physical anguish. By its third rotation, Simcoe was starting to consider that Culper Ring’s existence might have been a contributing factor to Hewlett’s decision to make an attempt on his life exactly two months prior. He ejected the disk and turned the radio to a low hum. Andre asked if they could stop for coffee so long as they were going to keep driving around. Simcoe ignored him as his hunt continued.

After a little more than two hours of searching for street parking, their first chance escaped them. He felt himself bringing to sympathise with Second Amendment enthusiasts as a four-door sedan robbed him of what he recognised was his last shot of saving Anna Strong from ruining the next three years of her life.

“This is clearly why the city issued a gun ban.”

John Andre groaned in response. “Should we just forget it then?”

“No,” Simcoe answered slowly, “Though I do have half a mind to tell you where I’ve a bottle of Jäger stashed so that we might create a literal Jägerbomb and thusly available daytime parking.”

“You know that I am legally obligated to report such statements to the authorities if I am given any reason to doubt that your words aren’t purely hyperbolic.”

“No risk at all, Doctor, as I am quite certain that you would simply finish the flask before it would be on any use.”

“Why are you driving around with an open bottle?”

“Isn’t that a question for the philosophers?” Simcoe asked as he pulled into a petrol station, surprised at how much gas had been used on the same eight blocks. When he went in to pay he bought Andre a coffee as he had requested as well as a small tea for himself, pocketing a few packets of cream and sugar to bring back to the man who had elected to wait in the car.

“You?” Andre asked as he emptied a second package of cream into his coffee.

Simcoe shook his head.

 

* * *

 

The last time he had white tea was shortly after his tenth birthday.

Sometimes he could still taste it when he was under stress. As he was now as the search entered its third hour. In general, driving made him nervous. Driving slowly made him especially nervous.

Sometimes, under stress, he could taste white tea.

Sometimes he could smell burning oil.

Sometimes the sounds from the streets morphed into screams.

He wondered if he had actually head them prior to the roadside bombing, or if his memory had been influenced by depictions in film and television. His fingers tapped against the wheel. It was curious, the things one remembers and the things one does not. He had forgotten the sound of his father’s voice, for example. But he knew enough to recognize that it couldn’t have sounded much like his own. After the explosion, he couldn’t hear for months. He didn’t speak for many more. And when he finally did, his voice came only as a high squeak and did not alter half as much during puberty as the rest of him did. He wondered if other people still heard him the same way he heard himself. It had once been embarrassing. Until it wasn’t. Until the comments stopped shortly after he discovered that he could use violence to express what he struggled to vocalize.

In the wake of the attack had brought him from Islamabad to Chelsea, Simcoe spent the majority of his time staring off into space. Trying not to think about anything, or trying to think of anything else. Until he had forgotten. Everything except the minor details.

 

* * *

 

He still preferred texting to talking. He was glad the rest of society had finally come around to this inclination.

“Glove box.” Simcoe said as he watched Andre tapping nervously at his phone.

“Forgive me,” his passenger said as he reached for the bottle, “I find myself in the difficult situation of breaking things off with someone who doesn’t quite realize that we have been dating.”

“If you don’t mind my input that hardly seems onerous.”

“One would think.” Andre sighed. “Truth be told I was rather starting to enjoy the flirtation, but external factors have rendered continuation an impossibility.”

“My condolences.” Simcoe hoped he wouldn’t continue. He had enough of Andre’s creative interpretations of what constituted as a relationship over the past six weeks.

“He, the man in question, and she, the girl I have been perpetrating myself as for the past few months are attending the same event tonight.”

“Perpetrating … over the internet?”

“Hm.”

“Isn’t one of the licencing requirements for practicing phycology in the State of New York to be of good moral character?”

“If you knew who I’ve been catfishing you would recognize that I was doing the Lord’s work.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“It depends.” Andre paused, “How closely do you follow US Politics?”

“I am aware that they are having an election. And then some months later there is going to be another one. And that they are treating it as if it were the end to democracy.”

“The name Benedict Arnold means nothing to you then?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Then it will probably be as much of a waste of my energies attempting to explain this to you as it was to Hewlett.”

“That is vaguely offensive.”

“A senator. One of the instigators in the attempted government shutdown last fall. I’ve been writing to him as Peggy Shippen and,” he smiled, “oh the things I have gotten him to send.”

Simcoe thought about the gorgeous blonde in question, her features transforming into Andre’s in his mind.

“To Peggy Shippen?”

“You know her?”

“I am more than familiar with her Instagram account. In lieu of what you’ve just disclosed it pains me to say I find myself forced to remove her from the spank bank.”

“Curious.”

“What is?”

“That you share my taste to some extent.”

“I think that your tastes are so extensive it would be far more curious if there wasn’t some overlap.”

“Hewlett had no idea who she was.”

“The teenage version of your wife? No, of course not, but then he would have no need of a proper wank,” Simcoe paused in thought. “What do suppose it is like to have gone through life without ever having had an erection?”

“I imagine it is something of a super-power. One that would have saved me from many of an embarrassing situation.”

“As angry as I am with him I can’t help but pity his situation. Though he will probably find some parallel in mythology that suits him and become in short course aggravatingly self-righteous about it.”

“We all have our coping mechanisms.”

 

* * *

 

He didn’t remember the explosion. He remembered the hospital afterward. He remembered staring at the people who were trying to talk to him. Afraid to blink. He remembered later being told to look at a certain point of the wall. A point that didn’t exist as anything in particular except that it was where someone’s finger had just been. Something to gaze at as his eyes and ears were being examined. Then the doctors would then smile at him. And he would stare at them until they left or indicated that he should look in another direction.

He didn’t remember the flight from Chaklala to Heathrow. He didn’t remember his estranged mother picking him up at the gate, he didn’t remember the roughly three weeks he had spent in her flat. He remembered finding her laying on her stomach in the foyer one evening and turning her over to see the white foam that had formed in her mouth. It reminded him of steamed milk.

It didn’t remember if he cried or not. He didn’t remember how long he sat there with her body, waiting for her to smile or move or tell him to look somewhere else. He did, however, remember that by the time he returned to his tea it had grown as cold as she had. And it looked like the stuff that she seemed to have been throwing up. He poured it down the sink. From that point on he had taken his tea black.

He drank quite a lot of black tea before leaning to enjoy it.

Sometimes he wasn’t certain he did.

He drank cup after cup from a hospital vending machine when he’d learned that in a sick twist of fate someone he had then considered a friend had failed where his mother had succeeded. He’d drunken a great deal of black tea since. It kept him up at night until he became aware of the change to his consumption, but this realization did nothing to abate his thirst. More, it just severed to increase the number of personal text messages he sent and received. Before he averaged in the low 300s. Now he was up to the mid- 800s. He didn’t ask if he was being annoying. He knew he was. But Hewlett was himself annoying. And whatever Simcoe could think to say seemed to annoy him enough for him to stay around, if only to get the final word in.

Subconsciously Simcoe wondered if his mum had tried to call for help, if it had been an accident or a mistake or if things would have been different if he had been able speak to or hear her. Or had it always been in his nature to do everything within his grasp to push others away; and what then? And so what?

After his mother died of her own hand, Simcoe lived with his godfather for four months before his hearing returned. It would be another two before he began to speak and a year before he started to recognize that there was something wrong with his voice. It was around that time that he would be sent to boarding school, and it would be another two years or so before he realized that staring at people, sometimes past people, tended to make them uncomfortable. But what was he meant to do? He still had trouble sleeping most nights and likely would for the rest of his life. He was afraid to close his eyes. Afraid that he might miss something.

He didn’t feel it consciously most of them time. Sometimes he did. Sometimes it was all he was conscious of. Especially when he was in a slow moving vehicle.

 

* * *

 

Simcoe was silent for a moment.

“She deserves better, you know. She deserves more than he could ever hope to provide her.”

“I would remind you that it isn’t a real relationship by any stretch but I hardly think we are discussing Miss Strong anymore. You see this as another betrayal in a series the likely goes back to the day you and Hewlett met. I’ve noticed lately that there seems to be a pattern of transference.”

Fearing that this would transform into a conversation about his parents that he had been successfully dodging for 18 years, Simcoe emotionlessly replied, “Transference? No, we were at school together. This goes back longer than you assume.”

“I thought you said there was no overlap.”

He had lived with his godfather for a little under two years before being shipped off to a boarding school 40 km away, never to return. It was his first time being educated outside of home, and for that matter, being around other children. Fortunately for his sake, and perhaps by the same token unfortunately for others, he was competitive by nature. In short order he found that he was in the perfect environment to foster that aspect of his character.

Upon his arrival he’d found something to aspire to in the form of a sneering, sardonic sixth-former who hadn’t bothered to learn the names of anyone who couldn’t aid in his personal advancement.

“What I admired the most about him was that he was, in truth, a terrible leader,” Simcoe scoffed, “but he had such an air of authority about him that no one ever questioned or challenged his being in charge. If you asked him a question he would respond with impatience or indifference and even the teachers and faculty seemed a little intimidated by him. I spent the next six years trying to emulate that same kind of fear-based rule with limited success. You can imagine my disappointment when I met him as an adult and he turned out to be just as sad and submissive as everyone else whose spark has been extinguished by the light pollution of the big city.”

He thankfully had never experienced this sensation for himself. Simcoe rose to meet every challenge that faced him with a sarcastic smirk. Despite having been held back two years when he first entered the British school system he graduated near the top of his class and went on to read econ at Cambridge. He made his first million before graduating. After five months of working at the LSE he’d requested a transfer which his employer had been more than happy to grant him. Simcoe needed a challenge. He needed Wall Street.

The other streets of New York, however, he could have done without.

“So by your understanding, your behaviour towards Edmund stems from a desire to bring back the side of him you knew from a distance?”

It took him a moment to reply to this unwanted intrusion, looking for a diplomatic means to end the conversation without answering the question. He had no idea what Andre was getting at, and no intention of asking.

“They say never meet your idols.”

“My assessment still stands. You feel betrayed that rather than being the person you thought he was he turned out to be exactly the person you need him to be.”

“Right. Because everyone needs a prissy nerd to come out of the night and steal the love of his life because he can’t get his own shit together.”

Andre took a sip of lukewarm Jägermeister from the bottle, chasing it with the last of his petrol-station café au lait.

“You’re jealous.”

“I’m not.”

“The evidence you yourself have presented would suggest-”

“Do you hear yourself? This is why you have no friends outside of the team. And no support within it. You can’t seem to let it go that I’ve chosen to take my business elsewhere, that you have one less project to study the effects of life’s variables on.”

“I’ve cut my losses. Therapy only works if you are willing to let it.”

“I don’t need therapy. For that matter neither does Hewlett and probably more than half of your other patients. Your job is simply to tell people they have problems until they believe you. As for me? I believe in myself.”

“Then why did you seek out my services?”

“Court Order. And God help me, if you even start to ask - _how does that make you feel? -_ I will Princess Di you into the nearest guard rail.”

 

* * *

 

The previous night had marked the first time he had been out on his birthday since turning the day he turned ten. Since the cars slowed down and then stopped moving. He never read the fully report. He didn’t know which side of what war had killed his father and the rest of the convoy. He hadn’t known if he had been the target or if he was merely collateral damage. It didn’t matter. It never had. What was done was done. It didn’t really matter by whom or on what grounds. A year later the Pakistani government would test its nuclear capabilities and Simcoe would decide for himself that his father’s very presence in the region had been for nought. No one could really be said to have been at fault. It had been a matter of international politics and power plays that had taken its share of victims. That’s it. It was different matter with his mum. He felt he knew who was ultimately responsible for her death and hated him at least as much as everyone else seemed to.

He didn’t like talking about these things, which is why doctors throughout the years suggested that he ought to. The conversation never went anywhere though. It was just a line cost for the insurance provider. Sometimes he sat staring at the phycologists, thinking if they were real doctors they would tell him where to put his eyes. Andre would sometimes simply meet them, sit 45 minutes in a cold quiet, and charge his heath care for this visit. Sometimes Andre would say things such as “put that down”, “don’t touch that”, and phrases of the like. Sometimes he had ideas like making everyone in his Anger Management group do sport together. Which was how Simcoe met nearly all of the friends he had state-side. Because his employer said that he had to go and talk about things he could barely recall but were evidently affecting his ability to talk to clients. Because he was afraid to speak and often found himself saying cruel things to take the focus away from the voice he said them in.

It never got easier. But it was difficult for different reasons. Before when someone eventually found out he was an orphan they said “I’m sorry.” and he said “me too.” And he meant it. And then they treat him differently, as if he wasn’t different enough. As if he didn’t feel different enough. As an adult (for is anyone truly an orphan after 18?) they would say “I’m sorry.” and he would respond “It was a long time ago.” And he would mean it. And he would sound heartless. And maybe he was. Maybe he was just angry at nothing in particular and occasionally his unacknowledged rage found an outlet.

Like in the fact that he couldn’t find a parking place. Or in the fact that the girl he had been enamoured with for years had decided that she was in love with someone she simply found convenient. Or in the fact that he was helping them move in together. Or in the fact that he would have moved heaven and Earth to spend a moment in her eyes and warm himself in their fire.

She hardly looked at him if she could otherwise help it.

 

* * *

 

Too small for his Land Rover. In front of a fire hydrant. Too far from the building. The few options were all fatally flawed.

“I’ll call back, see if anyone can ask a neighbour to move or something.”

“Don’t.”

“Hm?”

Simcoe had thought about it after hearing the way Andre spoke to his wife over the telephone earlier. He had, of course, only heard one side of the conversation, but he couldn’t imagine that Philomena had done anything to deserve the resentment Andre bore her. On the few occasions they had met, Simcoe had come to the conclusion that her stage-name suited her; Cheer.

“I’ll do it. I don’t want to risk any kind of social contagion. If Hewlett ever speaks to, or even about Anna the way you speak to your wife -”

“You have no right to speak about my marriage.”

“You have no right to call it a marriage. I could report you all to the authorities you know.”

“You won’t though, will you? You would never do anything to hurt Anna, Philomena has done nothing to warrant your wrath and the idea of losing the two people who aren’t absolutely terrified of you and chose to be in your life anyway keeps you up at night, ” Andre bit back.

Simcoe hit the brakes, “Get out of the car, John.”

He did as instructed, taking a gift card from his wallet and laying it on top of the card Hewlett had given him last night –still unopened – on the dashboard. “Happy Birthday, Asshole.”

 

* * *

 

As fate would have it, Jordan was part of a legal team involved in a class action suit against the city filed by food truck entrepreneurs. He was constantly working on it, even when he was he obligated to be elsewhere. After his latest Blue-Tooth conference call he texted the captain of his soccer team with the location of a nearby industrial car park one of the plaintiffs in the case had recommended. He needed someone to instil order. This was taking far too much of his otherwise costly time.

When Simcoe arrived after a five minute walk he saw half of the people he knew and some he didn’t taking a break on the stoop outside.

“It has been more divvying up than actual moving.” Akinbode informed him. He wasn’t smoking, everyone else was. “So you know, you are all obligated to help me and Abby next month,” he informed the group for what Simcoe would learn was the eleventh time before going back inside to make a work-related call. Simcoe pulled out a cigarette, feeling that he’d earned it after the exceeding long drive that had taken him nowhere. He enjoyed watching Hewlett squirm as people who defined themselves as social smokers tended to, knowing that he could expect no further charity. Simcoe blew a ring in his face.

As he wasn’t on speaking terms with anyone holding a UK Passport, he turned to the man on his left – a man who it turned out was Anna’s ex – and made small talk about the merits of Virginia. Selah had been stationed in Norfolk and his new fiancé had taken a job at Blackwater. They were moving on Friday. Selah was relieved that Anna had been willing to sell him the furniture she had brought into their marriage as she was unable to fit most it in her new flat. There were some bookcases she refused to part with, but that could be sorted in a single trip to IKEA and would not require, as Najma may have gleefully anticipated, several weekends spent in that place he called hell.

Simcoe had stopped listening after “Anna sold most of her furniture.”

He felt an unexpected urge to speak with Hewlett once more after all. “At any point did you think it apt to mention that you don’t have any furniture of your own either?”

He hadn’t. But he would find a way to cover the costs of whatever they made need. He was making too much of an effort to sound sincere for Simcoe’s liking and so his words were met with bitter scepticism. Hewlett said that he accepted the low paying job at the planetarium for which he was over qualified.

“Oh, are you now? Qualified, that is.”

Andre tried to interject.

“No, no. I want to hear how Oyster would attempt to defend his accusation, as he’s, oh yes, failed so miserably in that respect before if memory serves.”

Hewlett gave him a look that he may have intended to seem frightening, but as it was as superfluous at the rest of his ridiculous facial reactions Simcoe couldn’t hide a half-smile which he knew to be terrifying. Hewlett took a step back as he spoke, but whatever his response was it was muffled by the sound of the mail carrier that had just pulled up in front of the building.

“’Bout to drive out to Setauket. You guys want to throw anything in the truck?”

 

* * *

 

“Sexy!” Peggy Shippen said as she modelled a little black dress in front of a full length mirror.

The ladies had been trying on the items of Anna’s clothing she hadn’t packed prior to leaving the apartment a year before, evaluating as a group what was worth keeping and what ought to be given to Goodwill.

“Sure,” Anna cringed, “but that is a slip, not a cocktail.”

“Still,” Peggy protested, “You could rock it with a mini jacket and hit the club.”

“I am afraid those days are long behind me. If you want it, it is yours.”

Peggy winked at her. She never had the opportunity to pick out items for her own wardrobe. She knew a dress had been sent over to the hotel from Bloomingdale’s, a dress she hadn’t seen but was sure she would hate as she was meant to wear it to the GOP fundraiser she had promised her father’s aid she would attend that evening. She was tempted to show up in Anna’s hand-me-down instead. She was even more tempted to skip the event altogether and take the petticoat on the adventure it deserved.

“What about this? I love this!” Philomena exclaimed as she pulled another garment from the box Selah Strong had unceremoniously thrown it into, dragging out the word love for several syllables.

“I haven’t seen that in years.” Abigail’s eyes grew wide. “I’m sorry, Mena - Annie! You have to keep that.”

“I really don’t think it will fit me anymore.”

“Try it on!” Peggy urged to the group’s general consent. Anna rolled her eyes but agreed to indulge them, provided someone help her with the zipper.

She examined herself in the mirror. The last time she had worn the dress in question she had run into Abe Woodhull and they had enjoyed one another’s bodies for all of three minutes in the alley behind her bar before he vanished from her life once more without much of a trace. When he had remerged years later she found out he had gotten married and had purchased a house in the area. Or his wife had. At any rate he was married, she was married, and a barrier existed between them that a light blue A-line couldn’t break. Even if, as Abigail claimed, it looked better on her now than it had in her early twenties. She sighed.

“You have to keep it,” said Philomena in a tone that gave no room for debate.

“Annie, you could wear that dress to the Court House.”

“For my wedding?”

She wondered what Edmund would say if he saw he in it. She wondered if he ever truly saw her at all.

 

* * *

 

He did. He had caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror from behind the door and felt himself paralysed by it. She was stunning. Exquisite. Far too much so to be hung up on him. He wondered if he heard sadness in her voice as she offered amendments to the story Abigail had written and was now preforming about their supposed first date.

“He erected his huge, magnificent telescope behind the tavern as he prepared to show her all of the wonders of the night.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Philomena laughed.

“No. It is quite literal.” Anna said.

Edmund died a little as he listened.

“I think it is romantic that he brought his world to you.”

“So do I,” she seemed to choke before excusing herself to an adjacent chamber to get another box.

“What?” Peggy asked as Abby and Mena exchanged a look.

Hewlett hoped that however close Abigail was the Shippen sisters that she had enough sense not to tell the daughter of a party elite that her other best friend was prepared to wed on erroneous grounds.

“She is getting cold feet,” Abigail stated.

“She shouldn’t. You should have seen him last night!”

“And you should have let them to their own business.”

Anna hadn’t answered her phone the night before because Peggy had taken the Acela to New York City a night early. If she was being otherwise forced to spend a few days in this, what she deemed, lesser city, she was going to get a girl’s night out of it. But Hewlett had been given information that couldn’t wait till morning. He was happy to find the girl’s at Abigail’s townhouse with Chinese take-out and a bottle of bubbly. He was surprised to see that Peggy was so willing to help in the move the next day, but then a lot of things about her surprised him. In addition to being unbelievably kind, she was every bit as beautiful as she looked on social media and twice as brilliant as half of his professors at Cambridge had been; which said a lot to the credit of someone who otherwise said things like “Hashtag, no filter!” during normal discourse. She reminded him a bit of the person Andre had been before, well, before he started pretending to be Peggy Shippen. Part of him thought to warn the only person he seemed to be on speaking terms with as to her presence in the flat. The other part of him was still frozen in the spot where Anna’s reflection had left him, eager to hear how the incomparable Miss Shippen interpreted the events she saw from behind closed glass.

“You should have seen his face when he hugged you. It was as if all of his worries had vanished, it was as if he had reached heaven’s gates and a choir of angels were singing your name. I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but normally he is a bit …”

“Peculiar looking. It is alright, you can say it. We all do.”

“When he smiles the world makes sense doesn’t it?” Anna objected.

“It does. And you are his world. Don’t let this chance of happiness escape you.”

Hewlett would later learn after she had been arrested that Peggy had surprisingly little romantic experience of her own to use as a basis of reasoning. For the moment however, her arguments made sense to him, to Anna, and to the man he hadn’t realized had snuck up beside him.

“You have to tell her. The longer you wait the worse things are going to turn out.” His words, for once, didn’t feel cruel or reprimanding but simply concerned, for Anna’s behalf no doubt. It made the all the worse.

“I know,” Hewlett admitted, averting his eyes to the floor.

 

* * *

 

Simcoe was bitter that his glory had been stolen by one Caleb Brewster, who, on account of driving government property, didn’t have to worry about where he parked it. He wondered if the postal worker cum world’s worst drummer was breaking federal law by allowing the remainder of boxes and bookshelves to be loaded in his mail truck but Brewster didn’t seem too concerned. Unlawfulness seemed to be the theme of the day, after all.

“Can you help me with this?” Hewlett asked.

“Akinbode.” Simcoe called out to the man who promptly pushed his adversary aside.

“Wouldn’t want you to break a nail, Oyster.” He said, lifting the last of the three still-assembled Billies with ease.

“Let it go,” Andre advised Hewlett, “he is in a mood.”

After fighting with his otherwise lovely wife, who had shown up during her lunch hour with catering from her set, Andre had taken to giving orders about how things should be packed and where. Simcoe’s Land Rover didn’t make his list. He wondered if this was out of spite or owed itself more to the fact that the vehicle was currently four blocks away and there was a half empty USPS vessel double-parked before the building’s door. If it weren’t for his weekly drives out to Setauket, Simcoe swore that he would sell the thing. Andre seemed to do fine without a car after having his licence suspended and Hewlett had mentioned on the previous evening that he meant to downsize. What was the point of having a Defender 110 if it he couldn’t use it to help his friends? What was the point of anything if the word friends itself could only ever be used in its weakest form?

He wondered if there had ever been a time where his presence didn’t send shivers down Anna’s spine, as it so clearly did as he tried to offer his assistance with a particularly heavy box. He could hear her pulse from the ten centimetre distance between then. Not from physical exertion (she lifted heavier cases of beer at the bar all the time and had the arms to prove it), or from forbidden lust and anticipation as he had long believed to be the case. He wondered if things would have been different had he taken advantage of her when she had once offered herself in a vulnerable state and hated himself a bit more for the thought. He took the box against her protests and turned away, abandoning his ambitions of spiriting her back to his penthouse on the Upper East Side while making all the promises of protection that Hewlett had no doubt offered. Promises that he knew himself to be capable of delivering on. Promises he took very seriously but kept silent, knowing that if he were to speak them they would fall on deaf ears.

 

* * *

 

Philomena left after lunch with a few old garments and a Latin-English dictionary Anna still had form high school but said she no longer needed. Edmund had three and she was doing fine with Google. She hugged them both and wished them the best of luck, hoping that their marriage would be happier than hers. She wondered if it wasn’t worth it to get in touch with a solicitor after all. She wondered if she would ever be as happy with Charles Lee as she had once been with John Andre were she to leave him.

Abigail left shortly thereafter to pick Cicero up from school. She told Anna she would swing by Whitehall later to help her unpack and asked if she should pick up some food on the way. Pizza and beer was an excellent choice.

Akinbode had excused himself as soon as the last box had been loaded for transport, stating that he needed to get back to his office. Simcoe said he would have given anything to steal him for the legal team of his employer, and Akinbode said he would think about it if he was still alive after this case. He kissed his girlfriend on the cheek to the oohs and awes of her oldest friend.

Anna and Selah embraced as they parted ways for the final time. She asked he needed any help on Friday, to which he responded that the military was paying for it. She was happy that he had found a job the enjoyed, he was happy that she was still happy at the bar where they had met. They compared notes on each other’s new partners (encouraging, with a hint of joking disapproval.)

Hewlett left with Caleb in the mail truck, Anna’s car now packed to the brim with not only its usual debris but a few odd boxes. He needed to be the first one to arrive at the home he and Anna were about to share, and he had multiple reasons for it.

Anna followed them in her Escort, after a final round of goodbyes.

Simcoe considered following the party back to the house. He was headed to Setauket anyway. Andre had mentioned something about important business at DeJong’s that very night. After a few minutes of searching for his teammate and former doctor he abandoned his quest. There was no Champion’s League on this given Tuesday and what other business could have required Andre to be at a dive bar on Long Island? He said goodbye to Anna’s ex and his current. When the later responded in Urdu he resolved to go to DeJong’s himself. He left without saying as much, feeling he owed no one an explanation.

 

* * *

 

Things would have been different for all parties had Simcoe put a little more effort into his search. He would have seen Andre on the corner with a girl wearing a black slip-dress far too early in the day for such attire. He would have overheard her ask him to show her the city. He would have seen the Andre’s face soften as his other plans were forgotten.

He wouldn’t have ended up on his date.

Seven hours later, Simcoe found himself sitting next to a man he didn’t realize was the face behind the dick-pic Andre had shown him while they had been looking for parking. The man had been talking at length about the problem with women. At first Simcoe had been keen to listen, not wanting to otherwise associate with the on-duty bartender, the maître d' from the night before, or the third member of their band, who walked in around nine, completely unaware that he now had an angle living with him under his father’s roof.

When the conversation turned from heartbreak to misogyny Simcoe had already heard his fair share, but, as it would happen (and as it often does), the man beside him also had quite a lot to say about ethnic and religious minorities, the LGBT community, English as the national language, and a host of other topics which Simcoe would have been better able to write off on a normal day as drunken nonsense rather than dangerous rhetoric. But it wasn’t a normal day. It was the accumulation of the reminders the past two months had given him about all of the various reasons that Anna Strong would never become Anna Simcoe. He had thought he’d had enough beer to tune out the bigot beside him, the three idiots whose impromptu live performance was every bit as bad as their studio album, as well as the rest of the patrons. And then the one-sided conversation turned to what a shame it was that Europe’s refugees weren’t being kept in concentration camps. Surely they still had them in Germany at least? They still had Volkswagen. Simcoe turned, blinked, and asked the hateful man if he was serious. When he answered affirmatively Simcoe invited him to step out into the parking lot.

The instant the door was closed behind him, Simcoe had the man of the ground. With a bloody fist he dragged him back up to his feet so that he might knock him down once more. After the first few swings it wasn’t about the man or the extremities to which he took his right to free speech. It wasn’t about Anna, or Hewlett, or Andre, or the various traumas of his youth which might have been used in a last ditch effort to excuse his behavior at sentencing. It was just a blur.

Until he saw the light.

Or, more appropriately, two lights; two headlights of a dirty four-door sedan he knew all too well. The vehicle screeched to a halt a moment too late. There was a thud as the car and corpse collided, and then a gasp, as the driver stepped out.

He had never seen the petite redhead before.

Wordlessly, she kneeled down and checked for a pulse, looked at him, at the body at her car and back up at him again. And then she said something that would rewrite the town’s history. Something that he would never forget. He would joke later that she should have included it in her wedding vows.

After the statute of limitation had passed, it would be the way he began telling the epic that was about to unfold to his daughters; the very first words their mother had ever spoken to him were, “I have a key to the basement. If you help me carry the body, we can hide it there until everyone has gone.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, you read that correctly, ‘Mary and Simcoe Hide a Body’ will turn into ‘Mary and Simcoe Have a Baby’ before this tale is done -come on, who among you isn’t shipping them after 3.7?-  
> \+ Akinbode will win big in court, Peggy will be arrested, and both Anna and Hewlett are hiding something potentially problematic from one another (if you were keeping tabs on the foreshadowing.)
> 
> As most of this makes reference to news items that are purely American, I’m asking you guys for notes this week in case I got anything wrong. (And if you have any questions by all means feel free to ask!)
> 
> The Simcoe lived in Pakistan thing was spun off a deleted scene from season one (where he lived in India until he was 10 when his father was killed. I’m not sure which region so I just picked the one where something was happening that fit in with the Modern AU timeline.) 
> 
> Thanks as always for reading. I don’t normally ask for comments / kudos (although they are always fun to get, I won’t hide my vanity …) 
> 
> BUT
> 
> Half-jokingly, someone warned me while I was writing this that I, as a Muslim, should be hesitant to write fanfic that included certain “buzzwords” that other people wouldn’t have to think twice about. So I really thought long and hard about it and decided that it is, I think, very stupid to worry about such matters, and that if some poor individual –who I recognize is protecting me as well as my neighbours! - was forced to read this in full because it contained a certain word or phrase, I am so sorry for wasting your time and consequently taxpayer money. Send me a list, I’ll avoid them in the future. That said - I would absolutely LOVE to get some c/k love from you, if you, in fact, exist the form I was told to feel paranoid about. 
> 
> Actually, to that end … don’t you think it is about time we met Ben in this thing?
> 
> XOXO - till next time.
> 
> Up Next: Peggy takes Anna's old slip out of the ride of its life.


	6. The Crime Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary and Simcoe return to the scene of the crime to find it empty. They come up with a plan B and grow a little bit closer throughout the course of setting it into action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight language warning for this chapter, but no dark subject matter appears that hasn’t been addressed previously. This update specifically has to do with rejection, jealousy, misconceptions of character and intent, cosmetics, bad coffee, book clubs and unrequited affection.
> 
> You know, like fluff, only with Mary, Simcoe and a missing corpse. Shall we then?

They spent an hour watching the news unfold in Simcoe’s shady motel of choice. Mary questioned every decision that had led her to this point; stealing a single pill to calm her nerves, returning the second that would have knocked her out; letting her husband use their only car knowing full well that he meant to drive it to the bar, agreeing to pick him up when she knew she shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel.

Had she been in full possession of her mental facilities, she would have phoned the police and told them there had been an accident, as opposed to forming an allegiance with a man who might well have been the devil made flesh.

She glanced over at him, lounging comfortably in an arm chair beside the window, presumably still making trades on his mobile device in the Asian and European markets. He said he didn’t sleep much, something partially owing itself to medication, partially to the condition it pretended to fix. He declined to offer more detail. Mary assumed he’d meant cocaine.

When he noticed her eyes on him he attempted to offer her reassurance, something which, to his credit, he’d been doing since their arrival.

She flipped through the hundreds of news channels available on the old TV though what turned out to be an even older satellite dish. Fox was claiming terrorist involvement. The BBC was drawing parallels between the senator and an MP who had recently received threats from a politically explosive student union. The German NTV had since returned to screening a documentary on the history of submarines from what little Mary could tell and Simcoe could translate. Russia’s RT seemed to be doing there level best to cover the story while implying that western media had hindered the investigation, and CNN seemed set on proving Moscow right. The correspondent whom Mary had spent the majority of her wait time watching had gotten ahold of the inspector who had been named to head the investigation. He looked bewildered but determined and seemed to say all of the right things. Promising to keep the press and the public informed when more details became available, he wanted to refrain from speculation at this stage of the investigation. He seemed young for an inspector, confident without being cocky. Mary wondered why she took an instant disliking to him, until she saw his name.

She looked at Simcoe once more, glad to have left the cops out of it. She wasn’t certain if she trusted him, but she knew he was better than the alternative the NYPD was offering. She set a reminder in her calendar app to record Nancy Grace tomorrow and she what she had to say on Benjamin Tallmadge’s return to policing. A lot of pundits would offer a range of the same opinion on the inspector and on the now four year old case his name evoked in the days to come. The police force ought to have expected as much; it was, after all, an election year and tensions were accordingly high.

“Shall we?” Simcoe asked as the quiet buzz of the alarm he’d set sounded.

Mary nodded, switching off the TV and saying goodbye to the lumpy but surprisingly comfortable hotel bed.

She let him place his arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the car, partially for the sake of appearances, partially because the memory of what had happened to Sarah Livingston while she was in police custody in 2012 still sent shivers down her spine. Simcoe asked her if she was alright and then answered his own question with the same reassurances he had been providing all night.

After depositing the room keys in a fishbowl at the reception desk with the others that had served their night’s function, the pair hurried to Anna’s Escort and rode in silence back to Setauket.

 

* * *

 

Simcoe instructed Mary to turn off her headlights when they reached the edge of the town, drive two blocks or so and park on the side of the unlit back road. DeJong Tavern was less than a five minute walk away, he claimed. After they had seen to their business, he would give her a ride back to Anna’s car and follow her in his so as to make sure she got home safely. There was something simultaneously venomous and nonchalant in his too-high voice.

“Have you done this before?” she inquired.

She could feel him looking at her.

Mary wasn’t certain that she wanted a man who was able to calmly discuss the disposal of a corpse to know where she lived. On the other hand, she realized, she wasn’t certain when the last time anyone at all had concerned themselves with her personal safety had been. Both of these realities stung.

“Thank you,” she swallowed.

“No need,” he smiled, tapping his fingers haphazardly against the window.

Mary pulled the vehicle to a full stop when Simcoe indicated for her to do so. She had barely been driving it since turning off the lights, afraid of having another accident.

They walked for the five minutes Simcoe had sworn to before Mary could tell that they were nowhere close to their target. The night was different in early spring. In the summer the woods would buzz with the humming of insects and the crackling of a campfire’s last embers. In the winter she would have heard the crunch of fresh snow beneath her feet, in the fall the sounds of leaves and laughter. Spring was cold and damp and deadly silent. The chill that seeped into her bones, however, had very little to do with the early morning fog which embraced her town.

“Are you cold Mrs. Woodhull?” Simcoe asked, already removing his jacket.

“Tired,” she replied as he moved closer. Mary took the jacket when it was handed to her but didn’t put it on. She noted how soft the leather was as she felt around in the pockets for the French cigarettes she had been given earlier.

“May I?” she asked as she found the box.

Simcoe took a lighter from his jeans and lit hers before lighting one for himself.

“Thank you. I’ll pay you back. What do these things cost these days anyway?”

“Twelve, fifteen dollars I believe? But you needn’t think on it.”

Mary coughed after a long inhale, “I don’t usually -”

“I know.”

It was the third time she had mentioned it. Beyond her name and occupation, the fact that she didn’t normally need a nicotine fix was probably the only thing he knew about her.

It was better that way.

She tried to hand the jacket back.

“Are you certain that you are warm enough?” He looked concerned, at least in lighting consisting of stars and stubs.

“I’m fine,” Mary assured him. “I just wish we had stopped for coffee.”

“I’ll make you some when we get back to DeJong’s. It is shite, mind, but you wouldn’t find better quality at a 7-11 or at a petrol station at this hour.”

“You won’t,” Mary replied. Realizing instantly that it sounded like she was concurring with his assessment of late night coffee options, she added, “make coffee when we arrive, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“Go upstairs and put the lights on? Simcoe -”

“John,” he reminded her, urging her once again to call him by his given name. “Mary, no light escapes those shutters and even if it did, there is nothing here and no one to notice.”

He was right. There wasn’t. Mary wondered when she had even seen the last sign or lamp post. The realization made her feel colder, still, she refused to wear John’s garment.

“I thought you said it was a five minute walk.”

“I…I thought it would be faster by foot. Perhaps not. Forgive me, I’d simply prefer to walk,” he replied. There was an audible shift in his voice. Her statement seemed to have thrown him off, exposed something. He was nervous. Mary asked herself why and answered with the fear that had been suppressed, but was now aggravated by adrenaline, alcohol and anti-depressants.

She stopped.

She knew.

Inside, she panicked.

Perhaps it was due to the memories of the Sarah Livingston media frenzy, perhaps it was instead the fact that Detective Tallmadge had been promoted to Inspector and had been assigned to the Arnold case. Perhaps it the reality that she’d recently become a murderer was finally hitting her; that she was walking with a not entirely welcome accomplice, that she had been walking for longer than five minutes or that she didn’t really know the area as well as she should. Mary really couldn’t say. Two things were however clear to her; her husband hadn’t called since she hadn’t shown up to retrieve him from the pub. He wasn’t angry, he just didn’t care. If she were to disappear, she wouldn’t be missed or immediately sought.

And Simcoe likely realized this as well.

Mary felt her heart stop. She found herself with the horrifying sudden certainty of what would very soon befall her. She opened her purse and dug around inside, wondering what would prove the most effective weapon; the keys, which Simcoe would need to get into the basement, her mobile, or her mace. She would have ran if she wasn’t sure that he could catch her, if she knew where she was or where she should go. The police were no longer a viable line of defense.

“So,” Mary inquired, “how are you planning to dispose of my corpse?”

Simcoe didn’t notice the possessive pronoun. “The plan hasn’t changed, you and I shall carry the body in the tarp back up the flight of stairs, place it into my SUV, bring it to the sound and -” he stopped, realizing that she had, “Mrs. Woodhull?”

“Mr. Simcoe,” she said, armed with her phone in one hand and a bottle of pepper-spray in the other, hidden behind her where he could not see it. Mary approached slowly. When she was near enough to him that he could view the picture on her phone’s display, she continued, “This is my son, Thomas. He is in kindergarten.”

“He’s precious.” Simcoe blinked, attempting to follow.

Mary took a deep breath. “I’m all he has. Please. My husband is never willingly around, my parents have barely spoken to me since Thomas’s birth-”

“And you think me a monster,” he finished, seemingly taken aback, hurt. “Mrs. Woodhull, what I am planning is to help you dispose of a dead senator, drive you back to your car and make certain that you arrive home safely. I don’t understand what part of that I failed to make clear.” After a long pause he added without looking at her, “My mother died when I was a child. I have no intention of forcing the same loss upon your son. Now, shall we?” He motioned for them to continue. Mary took the first step.

“I … apologize,” she half stammered.

He snatched his jacket back from where Mary had hung it over the crease in her arm, exposing the mace. Shaking his head, he pushed past her.

“For which part?” Simcoe asked, unable to disguise his agitation.

Mary wasn’t sure, and so she didn’t answer.

She wondered if she was being ridiculous or just stupid. If Simcoe were a demon with designs on her life, she wouldn’t have dared hope to appeal to his humanity. Now she had hurt him, and perhaps her own cause by proxy. Still, she kept her distance. He occasionally looked back to make sure she was still following him, but refrained from speaking.

It was better that way.

They walked in silence for the remained of their journey. It took them twenty-three minutes.

 

* * *

 

When they arrived at the tavern - as psychologically unnerving when empty as the woods at been-Simcoe went to the front parking lot to procure the hearse and Mary went around the back to unlock the door. She stopped when she noticed it was already cracked open, moving back and forth slightly in the light breeze. She didn’t dare approach alone.

In the fifteen seconds that followed, Mary ran as fast as she could until reaching the moving Range Rover. Indicating for the driver to stop the vehicle with her left arm outstretched and her right index finger over her mouth to caution silence, she approached. Simcoe recognized and complied with her gestures, turning off the engine and exiting as quickly and quietly as he could manage.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered. Mary could feel the warmth of his breath on her forehead.

“The door. It’s been opened.”

“Are you certain you locked it?”

Mary wasn’t sure, and so she didn’t answer. He nodded. She wasn’t sure if this was meant to reassure her.

Simcoe positioned her behind him as he approached, stopping short when the gravel of the unpaved rear parking lot turned to dirt.

“Do you see that?” he asked, pointing to the soil.

“What?”

“Exactly. No footprints, not ours from earlier, not any from whomever was here in our absence.”

Mary looked at him, unsure of what to make of it.

“Go wait in the car. I don’t want to leave you alone out here.”

Mary didn’t want to be alone at all. “Then take me with you,” she insisted.

Simcoe though about it for a moment before giving his consent, “So be it. Stay close behind.”

“Do you want my mace?” Mary offered. She didn’t know what to expect in the bar’s basement. If her accomplice was planning to lead a charge into the unknown, it might be prudent to arm him with the one item in her personal arsenal which might prove useful.

“I’m all the protection we need,” he answered curtly.

She had witness the end of a fight earlier and gathered that he was probably right.

There was no light at the top of the indoor stairwell leading to DeJong’s basement storage area. Mary took the unspoken offer of Simcoe’s hand and followed him blind, save for the light from her home screen.

“I don’t believe anyone is down here,” Simcoe said quietly.

When they reached the light switch where the stairs ended his suspicions were confirmed. No one else was in the basement. Alive or dead.

The senator’s trap was in the corner where they had left it. No one was inside. There was more blood on it than Mary remembered, but less than enough for her to go on.

Simcoe crouched down to examine it.

“He can’t have gotten far.”

“What do you mean?”

“With the amount of blood loss, injury sustained … not to mention the lack of footprints before the door … He is still here. Somewhere.”

“We should call the cops,” Mary offered. If Simcoe could protect her from a ghost, he stood a shot against making sure she wouldn’t share the same unenviable fate that had befallen Sarah Livingston.

“And say what exactly?”

“That we were coming back from Connecticut, I had the keys to my friend’s pub and we decided to stop for a nightcap. We found the bar like this. Thinking something was amiss we thought to ring the authorities to let them sort this out. Do you have Anna’s number? I’ll ring her first to let her know there was a break in.”

“There is no need to involve Mrs. Strong in this.” It sounded like a warning.

“Right. Okay. The most we will get booked with is trespassing,” Mary explained. “My father-in-law is the chief justice in the NYSC, he has connections. He can get the charges dropped.”

“For a cheating daughter in-law?”

“Scandal terrifies him. At any rate, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he keeps certain off-book accounting records in a safe in his home office, and I’ve at least one press connection which I would be more than willing to exploit to ensure our safety.”

“I’ve told you, there is no need to involve Mrs. Strong in any of this.”

“I wouldn’t be. The threat alone would be enough to control Judge Woodhull.”

Simcoe considered it before countering, “You are forgetting, I spent half the night drinking next to the senator. He will recognize me.”

“He might recognize you,” Mary corrected, empathizing the modal. “Come here.”

“What?”

“Come,” Mary beckoned for him to bend down. She freed his hair from the tie that bound it and ran her fingers through it until it was straight. Until she was satisfied. “Your hair is so soft!” she whispered, delighted in the surprise. “What kind of shampoo do you use?”

“Uh,” Simcoe replied, stupefied.

Mary retracted her hand from his mane. “Sorry. There. You look like a ginger Jesus. He is drunk, likely has a concussion, and will be none the wiser. Do you have a change of clothes in your car?”

“I have my sport bag.”

“Go change your shirt at least,” Mary instructed, noting for the first time the blood on his cuff.

“What about you?”

“Arnold never saw me.”

“You have a point.”

Mary nodded, pleased with her own quick thinking. “With the car having been washed, the receipt for the condoms, our cameo on the hotel’s security system, our story should check out. Go change, I’ll find the senator, and then we will ring the police. Who knows, we may even become heroes in the next news cycle for finding him in time to save his life.”

“We’ll both be banned from the pub though,” Simcoe said. For the first time Mary detected a hint of remorse.

“Be thankful that that is your only concern. And not necessarily. Anna and I used to be friends. You say that you are decidedly _not_ friends with Edmund but you seem close enough to have at least some dirt on him.”

“Dirt? Filth.”

“See? Setauket is a small town. Anna is not going to want to lose any customers and if she is willing to let you go, putting pressure on her boyfriend might entice her to let you stay in the interest and peace and quiet. Now go change.”

“I don’t want to leave you down here alone.”

“I have my pepper-spray.”

He smiled at her for the first time since she’d incited their small spat. “I find myself wishing we had met under better circumstances, Mrs. Woodhull," he whispered.

“I wish I’d never made your acquaintance at all,” she winked.

 

* * *

 

Mary went upstairs when she was unable to find any signs of life in the basement beyond what looked like rat droppings. The bar was no more promising. There were a few emptied bottles littering a few of the tables, but in a manner which suggested that whomever had closed had left the clean-up for the next shift, rather than Benedict Arnold had woken up and continued his binge. Mary made a mental note to casually give Anna tips on how to discipline her employees when next they spoke. She proceeded to check the kitchen and finally the bathrooms for signs of the senator. Nothing.

There was no blood, nothing whatsoever to suggest that an injured man had entered the main building. Mary took a long look at herself in the ladies’ room mirror. Tired eyes. Pale pink skin bleached out by the florescent lights. At least her $35 lipstick held up to its marketed promise of lasting 24 hours. Considering that she’d ate, drank and smoked since applying it, she was impressed. She fashioned her long red-gold hair into a loose bun, making a kissy face at herself as she did and a note to purchase a few additional shades plus whatever luxury hair-care products Simcoe used on her next pay day.

Provided that she was still a free woman.

The door opened, startling her.

For a moment she let herself hope it was the senator; that she wasn’t so hard, so shallow that she was honestly thinking about the MAC Counter when a corpse she had intended to hide was evading her. She could no longer blame the combination of Edmund’s Xanax and Richard’s Riesling for her delayed reaction time and emotional disconnect. This was her. She was horrid.

Simcoe, wearing a sweatshirt and soccer tricot for a team whose sponsor she didn’t recognize, breathed a sigh of relief. He spent a moment staring at her before electing to speak.

“Mary, your plan won’t work.”

“I couldn’t find a single trace of him anywhere.” She bit her bottom lip in frustration. A quick glance back to the mirror told her that it had no effect on her lipstick’s staying power. She didn’t know what she was thinking, but she knew it was wrong to have such thoughts. She started crying in spite of herself.

Simcoe wrapped her in his arms. Whatever he said was muted by her tears. It took only a moment for her to gather herself and come to her better senses, but what had remained of her morning mascara was now in a nasty black stain on Simcoe’s shirt. She’d have to buy him a new one. And switch brands with regard to her eye make-up. New soccer jersey. New mascara. New shampoo and conditioner. Same lipstick, new shade. She made a list in her head.

“What team is that? I’ll get you a new one.”

Simcoe glanced down.

“It will be alright, Mrs. Woodhull. He can’t have gotten far. I’ll bring you home and continue my search. I’m sure I can find him by morning.”

“I should help.”

“It is best that you stay out of it,” he said. Another warning.

“What are you planning, John?”

“I think you are right, he will either recognize me or he won’t. Either way I’ll sort it. The less I say to you the less trouble you will find yourself in.”

“He doesn’t need to die. Listen to me. We still have a chance here. We will clean up the basement. Anna has industrial supplies, I’ve seen where they are kept. We will make it look like whatever happened didn’t happen here. You have an alibi that I will vouch for.”

“Why are you doing this for me?” he asked, again taken aback.

“You helped me move and hide a body before anyone noticed that there even was one. You’ve been … present, throughout all of this whereas I’ve been,” she shook her head, not sure why she was confessing to her seemingly base nature, “I’ve just been thinking about additions I want to make to my fucking cosmetic case. Of all things. I accuse you of being a monster. I killed a man. Or thought I did. And I can’t even seem to connect to that. I’m sorry I … I’m rambling.”

“It’s fine. You know what I’ve been think about?”

“What?”

“How English betting houses set their odds. The entire night. I’m trying to formulate an argument in defense of statistics and find myself at a loss. It is something of a kindness, really. A defense mechanism. You are a decent person in an unfortunate situation, Mary, and for that matter, so am I,” he looked down, realized he was still cradling her, and slowly but decidedly loosened his grip. He didn’t take a step back. Mary wondered - not for the first time - if he had some sort of social deficit. She wondered if it was contagious. She resented him for letting her go as much as it disturbed her that he was standing so close. Then again, it was a small bathroom. She reached behind him to the door handle.

He followed her back into the basement.

“Okay, listen to me, take the tarp, load it back into your car, and drive it down to the sound. If they find it in the river the police will focus their search in that area, provided that Senator Arnold isn’t already enjoying the comfort of a hospital stay.”

“Do you do this for a living?” he smiled.

“In a way I suppose, I work for a charitable organization as I believe I mentioned. You’d be horrified if you knew the sorts of things I’m charged with keeping from the media.”

“I wish we had people like you on Wall Street.”

“I think Wall Street is beyond the level help I’m able to provide,” she smiled back. “It’s mostly dried,” she said feeling the thin waste-wool. “You might get a few drops on your upholstery but nothing you won’t be able to remove with a basic stain remover. I will mop the floor, the whole floor, so that nothing looks conspicuous, and by the time I’ve finished you ought to be done disposing of the tarp. You can give me a ride back to the Escort and we can go on our merry ways.”

“It won’t work,” Simcoe said after taking a moment to think about it.

“Why not? Often it is the simple solution which proves the best.”

“Have you ever been to DeJong’s before tonight, Mrs. Woodhull?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“It is something of a wonder that they manage to pass the heath inspection. A clean basement would be a red flag.”

“The state of the house is nothing unusual then?”

“Not at all.”

“Then we clean the whole bar.”

“I don’t think you understand what it is you are signing up for.”

 

* * *

 

Simcoe took his time throwing the tarp into the sound. By the time he had return Mary had scrubbed the floors in the basement, bathrooms, and kitchen free of blood, piss, oil and animal droppings. Wearing think gloves, she’d dusted, cleaned the toilets and refilled the paper hand towels and soap. There was less to do in the kitchen. Mary wonder if this was because it was upstairs, if it was overused, or if it was never used. Simcoe returned with the insight that Hewlett had recently repaired the hood vent and some of the lighting. He’d probably cleaned and cooked a few meals in there as well. It wasn’t unusual for the regulars to step in and help Anna out. She now had to manage with a considerably reduced staff. The bar’s owner wasn’t planning on returning from his winter lodgings in Florida. From what he’d heard, Martin DeJong meant to sell. The slow market recovery was the only factor hindering the process. At any rate, he was no longer willing to reinvest any of the profits into upkeep. Anna and her two part time employees were doing their best, but their best only went so far.

“It gets to me that this is the second time in the past eighteen hours that Caleb Brewster will get the glory for my hard work,” Simcoe said as he wiped down a table.

“ _My_ hard work,” Mary corrected. “What in heavens name took you so long?”

“I was … seeing if I couldn’t hunt down Senator Arnold.”

“I wish you’d remembered to hunt down some coffee,” Mary yawned. The area behind the bar was spotless. The bar itself was not. She resumed her work on a particular stain before being told that it had been there so long it was now part of the fixture.

 

* * *

 

“We should steal something,” Mary offered when they were all but finished.

“Pardon?”

“We will take some beer, whatever they have in the back office, make it look like a robbery.”

She was tired of cleaning and tired in general. It was close to daybreak.

“There is nothing worth taking as you can well see.”

“Beer? The register? A safe?”

Simcoe went behind the bar and started making the coffee he had promised on the drive up from Connecticut but had yet to deliver upon.

“I hope you don’t need milk in it,” he commented after finding a jug of 2% in the mini-fridge behind the bar, showing her the week old expiration date.

“I do,” Mary lamented.

“I can put whipped cream on it.”

“Works too. But then no sugar.”

Simcoe nodded, gathering assorted supplies that had, or rather should have, absolutely nothing to do with a cup of coffee.

“How do you take yours then?” she asked skeptically, pointing to a few of the various bottles Simcoe had stacked on the counter between himself and the stool Mary was sitting on.

“A robbery, I’ll admit, would grant us another level of cover, but I am hesitant to take something that might cut into Anna’s bottom line.”

Mary wondered how close the two of them were. Over the course of the night Mary had learned in no particular order that John Graves Simcoe was an orphan, that he had done well for himself in banking, that he spent his spare time watching sports or engaging in them, that he had no sense whatsoever of personal space, a pronounced nervous tick, limited self-restraint, and a borderline obsession with the local beer wrench. She wondered if that meant that she would have to see him again now that Anna was effectively living with her, and alternately, if she had found yet another erroneous ground on which to envy her college roommate.

“The cider may well be arsenic and ought to be disposed of in the interest public health,” Simcoe continued, “Wine, pfft! Here, take these and share them with the women in your book club.”

Mary had no interest in serving cheap wine to her friends. She did however, question when exactly she had brought them up.

“How did you know I was in a book club?”

“I didn’t. I assumed based on numerous factors that you spend you free time in the company of women who are using _The Alchemist_ as an excuse to judge each other on whose toddler will get into the best private prep-school, whose husband got the highest bonus -”

Mary smiled. Was she that transparent?

“Dangerously close, Mr. Simcoe. We’re on _Eleven Minutes_ , Au-pairs, and we judge women we don’t know rather than those we do, primarily on the basis of fashion. Which leads me to mention, I can’t possibly serve them this,” she said, pointing to the three bottles he had set in front of her.

“It can’t possibly be allowed to remain. I only know of one individual who orders wine in a damned pub. Act against nature that it is.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t take them, just that I wouldn’t serve them to anyone,” she winked.

“Pity. I hate to think of you drinking alone.”

“Maybe you can invite me to your book club then.”

“I’m not in a book club. I have, however, read Coelho.”

“To impress a girl?” By girl she meant Anna. He seemed aware.

“Is it that obvious?”

“How did that work out for you?”

“After a few awkward dates she told me she just wasn’t ready to see anyone at the moment.”

“You should have tried Austin.”

“Too late now. After we ended something she’d never let begin she decided she was ready to commit to one of my best friends, ex-friends. Truth be told I’ve always hated the man.”

“Oh. Ouch,” she said with as much empathy as she could force.

Simcoe smiled as he poured her a coffee.

“Is that how you met your husband?”

“Through Jane Austin novels?” Mary shook her head, laughing at the thought of Abe feigning culture. “No, ours is a good old fashioned story of meeting at a frat party and being young, drunk and impressionable enough to have unprotected sex.”

Simcoe seemed caught off guard.

“That’s rather unfortunate. I apologize, I didn’t intend-”

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I am happy with the way things turned out. Mostly. I love my son, he’s my reason for everything. I love my husband too, for what it’s worth. What about you? Any children?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll find a storybook romance with a happy ending someday, I’m sure.” It was a white lie. There were no Mr. Darcys or Miss Bennets in the real world. Mary knew that better than most people.

“Are you, or is that just something Americans say to make themselves feel better?” he challenged with a hint of sass.

“Does anyone really feel better thinking about an ideal world?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

“It brings me some comfort.”

“And what do your dreams look like?”

“The woman I love realizes that she is makings a huge mistake in agreeing to marry a man she barely knows -hopefully without her ever having to suffer him at his worst. Things then return to the way they were except … when I find an opportunity to tell her how I feel she will be more open to the idea of us.”

Mary took a long, slow sip of coffee that had lived up to its guarantee of being ‘ _shite’_ , then took Simcoe by the hand the way she would a girlfriend whom she was emotionally preparing for a chilling truth. “Okay, I think you need to let that one go.”

“What do you mean?”

“Speaking from personal experience? Anna might be pregnant. It happened to me. A lot of insurance plans don’t cover contraceptives. A lot of women think -”

Simcoe stated to laugh, “Anna Strong? You’re not serious are you? Who told you _that_ lie?”

“It is obvious isn’t it? Listen John, I didn’t mean-”

“Well that is bound to fall apart,” he poured more coffee into both of their mugs, “cheers.” After a sip, another chuckle and a pause, he continued, “I wish I could tell Oyster about this. Or anyone in our circle, really. Pregnant. That’s rich.”

“How else would you then explain -”

“A woman who didn’t know the man’s Christian name six weeks ago suddenly becoming the Grand Dragon of the Hew-Klux-Klan? I have my theories.”

She raised her mug to the pun. He didn’t return the gesture.

“Well?” Mary asked, suppressing a laugh.

Simcoe remained silent, picking out a few half empty bottles to steal in an effort to confuse the police and adding them to the contents of the _Lost and Found_ box.

“He’s gay and needed someone to marry as a condition of his trust fund,” she offered after much contemplation and the remainder of a cup of coffee she won’t have been able to drink were she not in desperate need of one.

“Excuse me?”

“Hewlett and Anna.”

“Oh. OH! No, but keep trying,” he encouraged, “these just keep getting better.”

“Tell me,” Mary quietly demanded.

“What concern is it of yours?”

“I’d like to know who I am living with.”

“Mrs. Woodhull, if you please. Think about the nights events and rephrase your argument. I’ve known you for all of six hours and can already recognize that you are one of the most capable, self-reliant people this world has ever produced. Nothing your pathetic tenant or his amazing bride-to-be could do could in anyway threaten or harm you.”

“So they are getting married?”

“I’d prefer not to speak on it.”

Mary was not willing to take no for an answer.

“I’ll tell you why I want to know. Abe, my husband, and Anna, who is now living in our house, dated in high-school. I don’t know that he ever really got over her. We were room-mates freshmen and part of sophomore year, Anna and I, when we were at NYU together. When Abe and I first started dating the two of them ‘ _reconnected’_ , as she put it. Anna told me all about it the day I realized I was pregnant and that was the last I ever saw of her until she evidently became a _Hew_ KIP voter under circumstances which seem mysterious. I love my husband, Mr. Simcoe,” she swallowed, “but I don’t know for certain that he loves me. I never have. So tell me, please, whatever it is that you think you know, what I may need to prepare myself for.”

Simcoe was silent for a few minutes. _Why wouldn’t he be?_ Mary asked herself. She had put him in the awkward position of having to defend the relationship of two people he wanted to see together even less than she wanted to have them in her home.

“Listen, as I’ve said before, this remains strictly between us. Hewlett failed to defend his dissertation. He can have another crack at it next semester, but he missed his opportunity to apply for a renewal to his student visa and having blown through his trust fund, he doesn’t currently possess the economic means to qualify for another option. There is, however, an exception in the form of a marriage visa. Thanks to the specific advice of another friend of ours, one John Andre, better known to you as the ass who orders wine you wouldn’t serve to you book-club friends in a place like this, Hewlett asked for Anna’s hand. I’m not certain why she agreed initially; I imagine it has something to do with something in, or rather absent from, her divorce settlement. She didn’t trust herself to ask for anything. Akinbode, who represented her in court - incidentally yet another friend currently on my shit-list - didn’t advise her otherwise. I think she needed fast cash and a place to stay. I wish she had spoken to me. Or I to her. But it is of no matter,” he clenched up. “She’s in love with him, she even told me as much. I believe her. You can see it in the way she looks at him, in the way she indulges his eccentricities. She isn’t a treat to your marriage, Mary. But, to that note, you shouldn’t settle.”

It clearly pained him to talk about it, she had no reason to press the matter beyond her own blatant curiosity, but Mary swallowed and asked, “Do you think Hewlett loves her?”

“I don’t think he loves anyone but himself,” Simcoe rolled his eyes. They landed on Mary’s hand, still atop his. She didn’t remove it. It somehow didn’t feel appropriate that she should. “However,” Simcoe continued, still looking at her hand as she started to rub her fingers softly against the back of his, “I don’t think him uninterested. He has -how should I phrase this - personal hurdles he has surmised as unsurmountable for reasons of convenience. Perhaps dear Anna will give him reason to ‘ _get the fuck over himself’_ , as you colonists say.” He tried to smile.

Mary felt awful.

“John, thank you. And it isn’t really my business, but you shouldn’t settle either.”

Lighting a cigarette he said, “No one wants me, Mary. Even my closest friends hate me more than half the time.”

Taking yet another from his dwindling pack, she offered his a small but honest consolation. “To be fair, you hate them too.” Simcoe nodded in agreeance. “If I’d met you under different circumstances,” Mary continued, “I’d think you were a nice guy.”

“And now?” he asked as he lit her fag.

“I’d still call you if I ever wanted to pretend to have an affair again.”

“Maybe that’s what I am doing wrong. Maybe I need to focus more of my energy on getting into physical altercations with pseudo-fascists in front of working moms who can’t find the breaks in borrowed cars.”

“Maybe.”

They did a final check upstairs to see if any evidence of Benedict Arnold’s undead presence had been unveiled during the cleaning. Finding nothing, Simcoe carried their take from behind the bar –as well as a carton of boiled eggs from the kitchen he didn’t want to see turned into salad- and carried them in the _Lost and Found_ box to the basement below.

“Oh no.” Mary said, noticing a bloody handprint that likely belonged to her on the wall by the light switch next to the stairwell. Simcoe handed her the box before punching out the drywall, unintentionally killing the lights in the process.

 

* * *

 

It was still dark outside to Mary’s surprise. She felt like the night had lasted more than two centuries, it didn’t seem like time should still be on her side.

“Is that my husband’s album?” she asked once inside Simcoe’s green Range Rover.

“Right, yeah. Sort of a last minute joke birthday present from your tenant.”

“Edmund? You guys really do hate each other, don’t you?” she teased.

“Not a fan either, then?”

“I support Abraham. I don’t have to like what he does.”

Simcoe followed her home after driving her back to Anna’s car, exactly as he’d promised. He said that he would drive around for an hour or so before going back to the city. Mary asked once more what he planned on doing if he found Arnold and once more Simcoe declined to answer. He told her he would go home to shower and change, go to the office a little early, yell at however many people he needed to frighten until the entire office decided it was best to leave him alone and then try to get an hour or two of sleep at his desk. He’d perfected the technique. Mary’s plan of action was to dictate half of her to-do list to her interns. Sometime in the late morning or early afternoon, she would pretend to receive a call saying that Thomas had a fever and she needed to pick him up from school or day care. It wasn’t perfect, but she had pulled it off previously.

They wished each other well and said good night.

Mary realized after they parted ways at the edge of her driveway that they had forgotten to exchange numbers. She realized by the time she made it to the house that she wouldn’t mind seeing him again, though what good could possibly come from it?

The motion sensor lighting didn’t go off when she used the garage entrance. She remembered Hewlett disabling it a few months ago, after he had been given permission, of course. He’d said something about light pollution. Mary had jokingly asked him if he meant to hide a body. He had responded by talking at length about his interest in telescopes. Mary, half ironically, looked around for shallow graves where Benedict Arnold might be hiding or might have been hidden. It was then that it dawned on her – there had been no footprints at the bar, neither from her, nor Simcoe, nor Arnold, nor anyone else who would or could have used the rear entrance.

Someone had defiantly been there in their absence.

Someone who might be able to provide witness against them.

Arnold couldn’t have escaped on his own.

Mary didn’t want to see Simcoe again. She needed to. And in the morning she would need to have an awkward conversation with one of the immigration swindlers about how to get in touch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you guys an Andre chapter last week, didn’t I? Good news is it has been written, bad news is I can’t quite decide if I want to juxtapose it with the Hewlett and Simcoe bits happening at around the same time in the narrative. Either way, you’ll get it soon, I promised. (And if you’ve a preference or opinion I’d love to hear it.)
> 
> I have a few notes this go around, not too many, as always I learned a lot about America and the English language in writing this and set most of my cultural references in the New World (If I got anything wrong, please be so kind as to tell me in the comments!)  
> Fox is a privately owned American right wing news agency. When footage from their station makes its way onto European stations we mostly take it as satire. It may well be the exception rather than the rule that they shout terrorism at everything.  
> Meanwhile, the foreign news stations (BBC, NTV, RT, CNN) all have their own quirks. Germany doesn’t have an international English language 24 hour news network, partially because we are so bad at news in general. I pick on NTV a lot in this fic, but all of our networks do the thing where they give 15 minutes of coverage an hour and then run old documentaries with a news and stock ticker at the bottom. Regardless of what is going on. 
> 
> HewKIP is a play on the British political party UKIP. Not sure how or if the Brexit is being covered in the US, but in Europe UKIP voters are being absolutely slain in the press right now (for 15 minutes at the top of each hour, followed by the history of the Hansa). Good on Mary for using an English reference, or? She was a loyalist in the show, so I can’t imagine her not having some interest in the UK in an AU. But then maybe she was just trying to impress Simcoe. Time will tell, won’t it?
> 
> Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian writer, Jane Austin was an English novelist. I’d honestly be surprised if you’ve never read (or been made to read) their collective bodies of work.
> 
> I think that is it, but if I missed something or you have a question you know the drill.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Thanks, as always, for reading! Comments and Kudos are always super fun to get, but its weekend ... it summer ... and you already made my day. Now, go out and enjoy yours!  
> XOXO – bis nächste mal!
> 
> Up Next: (finally!) John Andre gets fired from his own research project, Martha Dandridge-Custis gets a call from the Pentagon. (possibly! Anna and Edmund vs. Mary and John in who can more convincingly fake a relationship with the cops keeping score. – you guys want to read 7K or 9K words?)


	7. The Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An architect of his own destruction, John Andre seeks to absolve himself of sin by obtaining and dispensing a controlled substance he lacks the qualifications to prescribe. His deceit is discovered and he is promptly dismissed on the night that a prominent politician disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Alcoholism, medical malpractice, blatant manipulation, broken relationships, implied sexual deviance, prescription drug abuse, catfishing, research grants, pharmaceutical corporations, minor references to modern politics, “Schwiizerdütsch” 
> 
> Enjoy!

The cab fare from the restaurant, to the hotel, to Long Island and back home cost had him a total of $275. He gave the driver -who had humored him by switching the radio at his request from _Top 40_ to _NPR_ after a short breaking news report had interrupted his date’s favorite song- $50 extra for his troubles. The doorman greeted him and he responded in kind but didn’t approach; preferring to stare at his building’s beautiful façade than enter his broken home. At four o’clock in the morning the early spring air was cold and moist. Fog and smog obstructed the city’s neon and florescent lights, creating a soft ambiance that seemed out of sync with the song New York usually sung him. This was a lullaby. This was a dirge. He took a deep breath, hoping that the soloist upstairs would sing the verse he’d just written without forcing her familiar chorus on his unwilling ears.

“Is this sexual? I’m not in the mood, John,” Philomena Andre sighed, closing her eyes, no doubt wishing she had gone to bed when she had gotten home a few hours prior instead of reading reviews of the night’s performance and Skyping with her sister in Tel Aviv. The sister had greeted him when she saw him through her monitor. His wife had not. He probably should brought her flowers with his odd request, but the pair had long since stopped playing the roles they once had for each other. He wasn’t her husband in anything but name; a name he paradoxically refused to affix to the divorce paperwork that had been awaiting it for the past four years. He should have brought her flowers.

“Mena, please -”

“It is not really worth my time. You’re drunk. Assuming you can even get hard enough to make it at all worth my while, you’ll finish before I’m even wet. I’m not faking another orgasm for you tonight, and I’m sure as hell not doing it while pretending to be some teenager who had enough self-respect not to spread her legs for you.”

In nearly any other situation, he could have offered her a half-hearted apology or an empty excuse in lieu of an explanation, but he was in desperate need of her particular talents. He knew it was a long shot; that even if he could get her to agree to read from his script, there might not have an audience for her performance. He looked down at his phone again. The senator had yet to respond to any of the text he’d sent since he had heard the news. “Benedict Arnold is missing,” he informed her, “this has nothing to do with Peggy.”

“That guy who was meant to speak at the Trump Rally tonight? Solange and I were just talking about that,” she paused, and in a pitch that promised revenge at no one in particular added, “Did you hear that the NYPD has _Ben Tallmadge_ leading the investigation?” He hadn’t. Even if it were true, which he found unlikely - having lived in New York during the Sarah Livingston scandal- it mattered very little to him now. John took his wife’s hand in his and swallowed, preparing to confess to yet another life altering error in judgement.

“I think he may be dead. I think I may be responsible. He is the man I opened a chain of correspondence with, pretending, as it were, to be Miss Shippen. I took things too far, and upon seeing that I had lost control of the situation I had endeavored to create, I …” he had forgotten the instant he saw the woman he had been presenting himself as online. He was a victim of his id’s unchecked impulses. Of Peggy’s incomparable eyes. He continued slowly in a soft but deliberate tone he normally only used on his patients and partners, “I accepted his request for a face to face meeting. I was unexpectedly held up, and by the time I arrived the location we had set he was gone, having left a series of texts and voicemail which force me to consider the possibility, that he, that I … I can’t reach him. His staff and the police can’t seem to find him. Assuming he is alive but at risk my voice and confession will do nothing to alleviate his feelings of betrayal. I can’t go through this. Not again. Please.”

Philomena nodded, biting her lower lip. When she at long last spoke, she asked in a voice that was not her own, “Like this? Would you say? I only met her briefly and I half suspect that you spent most of the night showing her… the city.”

“A little higher, melodic, but with an understated force,” Andre instructed. Philomena’s true talent as an actress was her ability to take direction and deliver. He worked with her until he could see Peggy when he closed his eyes. “John, if I do this, there is something that you have to do for me.”

There it was. The chorus. John sighed.

“Mena, don’t ask this of me. Not for _him_ , and for the love of Christ not today. In addition to this mess with Arnold, I was fired from writing my own research paper and threated with a malpractice suit I will most assuredly lose if I can’t convince Martha not to bring it. I’ve lost what few friends I have, and found a love I can’t embrace. Please. Not today.”

“No,” she agreed, “Not today. When I leave you, John, I want you to be fully aware of what you’ve lost.” With that she walked away, returning a few minutes later with her giant purse. Philomena reached into her bag and handed him an envelope she had filled with brochures. “This is what I’m asking in exchange,” she explained, “Do we have a deal?”

 

* * *

 

There was something mundane about dating. Andre had once thought flirtation an art, but lately he had come to realize that it was more of a mechanical system. He wasn’t painting the predictable desires of the men and women he was entertaining in the colours of his carefully chosen words, but rather observing these lusts as they travelled through an assembly line. For a brief period he had considered himself its engineer, but after countless rounds of entice, ignore, and embrace he found that he was merely its controller. And he had lost control.

He didn’t attempt to justify to himself why he first started to play with them emotions of people he had never met, and likely would never meet. Perhaps he saw thin lines forming in the corners of his mouth and eyes and questioned if he could still prove interesting when his beauty was lost to time. Perhaps his motivation to manipulate was born from burn-out, having lost either the desire or the ability –or a combination of both- to influence his patients in a meaningful way. Perhaps it was the fact that he had no friends stateside outside of the people he was obligated to impress; or that lately he had failed everyone so devastatingly that his only other refuge would be to lose himself entirely to drink. Perhaps it was the fact that he had been functioning under the influence of alcohol for the better part of his adult life.

Andre had allowed his fun to continue for as long as it had because it was the only bad decision he had made in the past few years that he could reasonably live with. He talked to Arnold about what he would fictively do to him the moment he had him alone in large part because he couldn’t talk to anyone else about anything. He watched the clandestine crush escalate as his own world collapsed; using a fake relationship with a total stranger to escape the relationships from which he felt himself estranged.

He couldn’t stand to look at Hewlett since it happened. Simcoe seemed to want to talk to him in a professional capacity for the first time since he had accepted him as a patient, and for the first time Andre found himself occupationally inclined to discourage discussion. He lost them both as clients, others followed suit. He had absolutely nothing to say for himself. Which was perhaps why he let so many of his phone calls go to voice mail.

He felt his phone buzzing in his back pocket. The girl he was dining with twisted and twirled a strand of her long blonde hair between her middle and index fingers as she agreed that most relationships had a certain level of artificiality to them. She had asked him to show her the city after they had done a quick but familiar dance upon meeting – entice, ignore, embrace. He knew her previously only through pictures, both as one of his administrative assistant’s adoptive sisters and as the girl he allowed Benedict Arnold to imagine himself speaking to.

“It is easier, of course, to deceive when one’s conversation partner is drunk,” she’d responded after he had first tried to compliment her on her ethereal beauty. “But no,” she continued, “I never use filters. Just the right combination of drug store cosmetics and a basic skin care regimen.”

Her offhand comment about his surprisingly visible alcohol problem had cut him like a knife, as, he realized, he had likely injured her by commenting on her looks when she had clearly been attempting to capture his mind by displaying the prowess of her own. Andre had apologised, Peggy had shrugged it off by continuing to address his faults. Her father was in politics, most of the people she was forced to engage with were abusing one kind of substance or another. She doubted that anyone else was aware. He doubted anyone paid him much mind at all these days, and wanted to tell her as much for reasons he couldn’t justify; but years of brief illicit connections had forced his tongue into reciting another line from his all too familiar script. This one worked. She had asked him to show her around town. He found himself terrifically happy to comply with her request.

Andre took her to some of the least notable places he could think of, partially because he wanted to make a show of the fact that he wasn’t trying to impress her, partially because it was his wife’s name - rather than his own - which carried in it the power to open the city’s doors. He wasn’t sure if Peggy knew any of this and he was hesitant to ask. She seemed to be having her fun with him.

“Do you need to get that?” she asked when his phone buzzed again, “I know from Abby that your work is important.”

“Nothing matters more to me at this moment than you,” he answered in all sincerity. “What I ought to do is turn the thing off.” When he pulled his phone out of his back pocket to do just that however, the name of the display unnerved him. He swallowed as he watched the light on the screen fade as voice mail took over. He had nineteen missed calls. Three of which were from his research partner. John Andre hadn’t spoken to the woman who had lent her prestige to his upcoming paper in months. He knew that he had missed a deadline, but he would have been surprised if it had registered with her. No, he knew what the call was about. He glanced at Peggy apologetically before looking at the names in his back log to confirm his assumptions. Two unanswered calls from Pfizer. He looked at the times and realized that he had been driving in circles with Simcoe and talking in circles with Peggy when he ought to have answered the ringing battle cries. He had been waiting for the call, after all.

He looked back up to the woman he would have gladly forgotten everything else for in that moment; she said she understood without waiting for him to offer an explanation. Andre excused himself from the table and stepped outside.

 

* * *

 

Dr Martha Dandridge was a tenured professor of phycology at Columbia who taught a handful of graduate classes each semester in between organizing and conducting research and contracting herself with various three letter agencies. She had first made Andre’s acquaintance after reading a dissent he had written while at university on her work with regards to military interrogation techniques. He had been as surprised to receive a reply from her as she had been to have her work thrown into question by an English undergrad. They had developed an instant rapport -as both were naturally inclined to do- as well as a deep mutual respect for one another which had lasted for over fifteen years.

Although their professional admiration had proven it could withstand all measures of time and distance; the differences in their individual approaches to conducting a long-term controlled study effectively ended their working relationship the instant she had agreed to co-author a paper with him on the societal effects of fear. In the year since Dandridge had accused him of becoming too personally involved in the outcomes of the study and asserting her concerns that the data was being thusly corrupted the two had barely exchanged greetings. The past few months had proven to Andre that his partner had been correct in her criticisms. They hadn’t spoken since.

He dialled his answering service, preparing himself for the conversation he had been avoiding having with anyone to unfold in the worst possible - and simultaneously most logical - manner. He braced himself for Martha’s diplomatic and almost maternal tone, which he knew from the declassified records of notorious detention facilities had previously undermined criminals far more dangerous than himself.

“I just got a call from my _favourite_ Pfizer rep -” Andre deleted the voice mail without listening to it in full, knowing that his colleague was bound hyperbolise whatever brief conversation she was force to endure on his behalf as the most painful occurrence of her week. He rechecked his own call log to confirm. Yes, the call had come directly from the man he had illicit dealings with, a man he knew she despised. The second message was directly in reference to the medication Andre had gotten from the drug company that wasn’t classified for psychiatric use. The third kindly suggested that he ring his solicitor.

He took a deep breath and turned around to face the hole-in-the-wall Ukrainian restaurant where Peggy Shippen was waiting on him to return. Their initial encounter a few hours prior had marked the first occasion since nearly killing one of his patients with some intent that he wished he wasn’t completely wasted. He knew that if he went back inside now he would drink the entire bottle of wine the waiter had brought, which thus far he had rejected in favour of water. He had known her for half a day and recognized she deserved to know a better side of him. Everyone did. Something in Peggy convinced him that that man still existed.

He closed his eyes and pressed the green icon next to his partner’s name. After a brief exchange of greetings and letting him know in no uncertain terms that this call was long overdue, Dr Dandridge started in where her first voice message had been deleted.

“I received an invoice from Pfizer which we really ought to discuss.”

“I’ll reach out. I am sure there has been an error,” he replied calmly, hoping to cover his transgressions rather than defend them.

“I don’t think you would be avoiding the university were that the case,” she paused. Andre could hear her lighting a fag in her office. “I spent half of my evening discussing your arrangement with Mr. Jefferson. With respect to our past partnership I am going to give you the benefit of a meeting tomorrow morning during office hours in which I’ll allow you to make your case for why I shouldn’t report you to the American Medical Association.”

“Past partnership?” Andre clarified.

“You are not licensed to practice internal medicine, John. Can you imagine the lawsuit? I’m sorry. You have left me with little choice. This data – you Oxbridge / Ivy subjects in their entirety must be eliminated from consideration. ”

The air outside felt colder. Andre had written the original proposal, most of the research was born from his efforts. The study would make his name when the results were published; and while he agreed that some of his actions had been unethical, amoral, and illegal, he could not simply allow his contributions to be passed over for the sake of the university’s convince.

“That is not how science works,” he challenged, “You know that.”

“I agree that the evidence you’ve presented is compelling, but if it bears any basis in truth similar results will be found elsewhere,” Dandridge’s tone was level and soft, but it did nothing to mask the sternness of her message.

“With regard the original proposal-”

“It is not your study anymore,” she interrupted. “Let it go. The only thing you ought to be concerning yourself with is how to convince me personally not to report you for the actions you seem to have convinced yourself that you took to further the study’s academic objectives. This has all gone a little too far, Dr. Andre. You know, or at least you should, that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed between patient and physician. They aren’t your friends. You’re not theirs, and you are most certainly not a cardiologist.”

“I know,” he consented, “I know.”

“If this ever sees the light of day-”

“It won’t,” his voice hardened as he began to pace. “Even if the subject somehow discovered the role I played in _saving his life_ , which I find highly unlikely-”

“How? How versed are you in the particular ailment you’ve sought to treat?”

He wasn’t. At all. Andre’s father had been a chemist and he was better acquainted at an early age with prescription drugs than he knew most other doctors in any branch to be after years in practice, but this fact didn’t qualify him to dispense heart medication any more than the guilt that filled his own did. He tried another route, knowing it wouldn’t lead him far. “I know him. He’d agree with my actions. He always does.”

“Well, it is me you need to convince.” With that she hung up. Andre had never heard her angry before, he wondered how nothing changed in her sweet voice. He imagined that part of her was relishing the opportunity to dispose of the pharmaceutical representative in question. But he could be convincing, he reassured himself. He swore as he approached the bar to order and drink a quick shot of vodka before returning to his lovely date that in the morning he would get his name back on the study which was essentially his and his alone. He would prove to his partner and to the university and to whomever else came to challenge him that he had acted in the interest of caregiving and that he should be applauded for doing so.

By the time he would make it to Dr. Dandridge’s office the next morning however, she would be on the phone with the director of a far more threatening three letter organization than the AMA. The series of events that had transpired in lieu date he had forgotten he had in Setauket would have by that point effectively forced an end to the project as a whole. In the next two hours he would begin to see Benedict Arnold as a real person as opposed to a passing fancy, he would be forced to deal with the mistakes he had made and their personal and professional implications, and perhaps most dangerously at all, he would fall in love.

 

* * *

 

Peggy hung up her phone quickly when she saw him approaching.

“I apologize for my absence. There is an issue at the university I’ve to sort in the morning.”

“I am more than capable of finding my own amusements, Dr. Andre,” she said giving him a small coquettish laugh. “What University? I assumed you were strictly private-practice.”

“I am the co-author of an ongoing research study, my colleague is a tenured professor at Columbia,” he said taking his seat at the table once more.

“Am I to take from your tone that you don’t get on?”

“It is research. It isn’t a question of it I much care for her or not. The problem I have is that it has primarily been my work, and the closer we are to publication the more Dr. Dandridge seeks to, how should I put this? Undermine my contributions. I am unfortunately willing to let her. I need her name recognition to secure the grant.”

“Couldn’t help but to drop it, could we?”

“I suppose it is a force of habit. Academia isn’t much interested in the contributions of an immigrant with a redbrick educational background, but if Martha Dandridge adds her star to the proposal funding and interest are all but guaranteed.”

“What is your research about?”

“The Importance of Fear in a Post-Modern Closed Gesellschaft”

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Peggy gave him an inquisitive look. Gesellschaft was a common term in phycology as he assumed she knew as a college senior, but he couldn’t help but to show off a little. The restaurant he had taken her to was an unimpressive establishment, the perfect bland background for him to contrast.

„Ja, aber leider nicht fliesend,“ he laughed, „Meine Eltern kommen ursprünglich aus der Schweiz. Die, was ich beherrschen kann, ist doch keinen Hochdeutsch. Apropos, wir können uns ja duzen, oder?“

Peggy nodded, making a very serious face. Andre wasn’t sure if she was joking or didn’t understand. “What does it mean though?” she asked.

“I’m hardly fluent, my parents are originally from Switzerland,” he began to translate.

“Das habe ich alles verstanden. Ich meinte,”

He was impressed, especially given that the bankers from Frankfurt he sometimes saw at DeJong’s had trouble with the light dialect he had inherited. “Oh, the paper itself? It examines the effects fear has on closed societies.”

“Is that something you can quantify? Fear?”

“It is the only emotion which is also an instinct - something that has been tragically overlooked in past research.”

“Is it interesting?”

“It is proving more problematic than anything else. We are looking at an assortment of groups. Martha is of the opinion that I’ve embedded myself into one sample in particular to the extent that there are ethics questions surrounding that gathered data. Though I can see the matter from her perspective I don’t share in her opinion that the data in question ought to be neglected. We’ve been going back and forth over this what she deems an issue for quite some time. This is just the latest round.”

 

* * *

 

Peggy’s phone buzzed while they were waiting on desert, “Sorry,” she excused herself as she checked it.

“Don’t be, I did the same to you,” Andre smiled absentmindedly. In spite of all of the day’s stress, he had forgotten that the world existed beyond the table where they sat, discussing whatever topic came to mind. Peggy shared his appreciation -if not his tastes- for art, music and literature. She was politically astute, worldly and well-informed; nothing of the shallow fool he followed on social media, the girl he perpetrated himself to be in moments of want and apathy.

“No, you didn’t. I know your work is important whereas this is … I’m,” she looked distressed, “Okay. Moment of honesty. I’m supposed to be interrogating you right now.”

“Interrogating? Me?”

“You set up one of your friends with one of mine, things are moving pretty quickly between them, and yet another mutual friend of ours suggested - based on your browser history - that I might be able to get more answers from you than she was able to.”

“My browser history?” Andre realized and instantly regretted having Abigail coordinate the administration of the office’s computer system. What else – and how much – did she know? He made a mental note to settle the matter by talking to his partners about giving her another raise. Howe would be an easy sell, Clinton would object for the sake of argument. He would bring it up on Friday afternoon when everyone was eager to escape to the Hamptons for the weekend. Problem sorted.

“On the internet,” Peggy clarified. Andre worried that he had said something which drew her attention to their age difference. “Here. You’ve been following me on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and Tumblr for months – by the way, I don’t run or even have access to any of these accounts, my father’s aids do,” she sighed, “I just have to show up where I am told and look conventionally pretty,” he detected a hint of resentment which he found oddly intriguing. “I don’t know,” she continued, “for whatever reason I guess Abby thought you had a thing for me.”

He couldn’t tell if she was flirting or apologizing.

“Hm.”

“And I’m supposed to be using that to get you confess your motives as it were.”

“My motives,” he repeated, disappointed that the only thing that had enticed Peggy to have dinner with him was the fact that Abigail noticed that he’d looked at a few photos that had been published of the youngest Miss Shippen over his office’s server. “For following you? Abigail brought you up once or twice. I generally add the friends of friends on social media. It is called networking.”

Peggy handed him her phone. A WhatsApp message simply read >> _And? << _to which she had responded >> _I’m having the time of my life!_ << Andre smiled at her, “Really now?”

“Don’t let it get to your pretty little head,” she teased.

It had.

“Should I sort this?”

“What do you mean?”

“How about – John says that he didn’t pressure Eddy to court Anna per se, but he is happy to see a romance blossoming between the two of them. Will that settle the matter?”

He hoped it would, at least for Peggy. He personally didn’t wish to spend the evening talking about Edmund Hewlett any more than he wanted to spend the next morning doing so.

“I should doubt it. Anna is … how should I put this? She’s ordinarily open, friendly, but emotionally closed off either by choice or character. I can relate, though I can’t understand why anyone would elect to govern their heart in that fashion if they weren’t otherwise under pressure to do so. It is rather curious though - now that she doesn’t seem to have put up her usual defenses we are all a tad concerned for her.”

“Do you care to elaborate? How do you govern your heart, Miss Shippen?”

“I have very little say in who I socialize with, where I go or how I dress. I am afraid that I will fall in love someday with someone really worthwhile who doesn’t meet my family’s standards or who doesn’t fall in line with the party’s objectives. Or I will be tied to someone I’ve never met and very likely couldn’t stand if I did because some old man running my Twitter account thinks it a politically savvy move. Do you understand? I am due to give a speech on Friday about defending the rights the constitution grants us without being able to relate to what it means to be free. Look,” she took her phone back and opened another chat, “One of my sorority sisters sent me this.” It was a screen shot of Benedict Arnold, or someone who had access to his account, asking Peggy where she was, saying that he would wait for her all night, as he had been waiting his whole life for a girl like her to come along. He’d tweeted at her 17 times. “I met him once when I was all of… fourteen? Fifteen? I mean, it is probably not even him and he is probably as humiliated by the whole thing as I am.”

Andre was speechless. He remembered once more where he was meant to be and who he was meant to be having this very conversation with. He suddenly wished for the topic to revert back to the intelligence work she was meant to be engaging in.

Peggy took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders back and adjusted her posture. Collected, she continued, “Forgive me, John. I am certain you have to deal with these kinds of rich-kid problems in your 9 to 5 and his all seems tiresome and ridiculous. I know how comparatively fortunate I am and I don’t claim not to be appreciative, I just, what I meant to say in all of this, getting back to Anna, is that if I were in her shoes, I would be keen to pursue love and romance. I think that is exactly what she is doing with Edmund and I really don’t comprehend why Abby has come to a completely alternate understanding of their relationship. But then she is far closer to Anna than I am. I was just meant to get your honest take.”

In honesty Hewlett had needed a Green Card and Anna provided a simple solution to a complicated bureaucratic problem. That much Abigail had already discovered or had been told. What she likely didn’t know was that Andre had made the particular match because he hoped that in doing so he would restore the balance of power that had been lost when Simcoe started blaming him directly –and correctly- for the specifics of Hewlett’s incident. He figured Miss Strong would be enough to bring their rivalry back up to standard, at least to the point of where their hostilities towards one another would be open enough for them to ignore how much they individually resented him. In theory, he should have had his authority back. Hewlett would be afraid of Simcoe and would look to him once more to keep their captain in line. Reality had backfired. The two now talked amongst themselves in numbers and figures Andre was beginning to think was code. As much as Simcoe resented Hewlett’s new relationship, he seemed to genuinely want Anna to be happy. Andre worried about how and where Simcoe’s building volatility would escape him, if not in its usual curse.

Abigail didn’t need to know this, above all else because she already couldn’t stand her boyfriend’s teammates. Andre had heard Jordan mention that she didn’t like him hanging out with the lads from the association team, and if he was forced to quit, well, they would be hard pressed to find a striker who could replace him. No, Abigail didn’t need to know his true intent. And neither did Peggy. He looked for an exit.

“My honest take is that you are nothing like the patients I see nor like anyone else I have ever met, Peggy. I’m sorry that you are forced to suffer the backlash of what is written about you or in your name,” he replied, unwilling to admit that he had dealt her the hardest blow. “Abigail’s problem is with my role in Anna and Edmund’s relationship, rather than with either party. Hewlett is part of a circle which Abigail has deemed a possible negative influence on her son because she is frightened by a few of its other members. I’ll speak with her in the morning. I’d ask that you pardon her for requesting your involvement, though I’ll admit I am grateful for the pleasure that has been your company.” With that he rose, taking a card out of his wallet with which to pay the bill.

“If you didn’t intrigue me, John, I would have broached the topic earlier. I would have forgotten it completely had I not received this reminder.” For a moment she looked vulnerable until he asked if he could see her again. She told him she would check to see what her calendar would permit.

Between dessert and the yellow taxi which Peggy insisted on finding since she was, after all, on holiday in New York City, they kissed. Peggy said she might be able to find some time for him in her schedule after all.

Fate had other plans.

During their midnight ride back to her hotel the radio station interrupted its regular broadcast to inform its listeners that Senator Benedict Arnold was reported missing by his own staff after failing to show up for serval meetings and the rally he was scheduled to attend.

“I was supposed to be there,” Peggy stated in shock.

_As was I_ , Andre thought, albeit of the dive bar with a sports package in Setauket where he had arranged to meet his would-be-ex-online lover. To Peggy, he said, “Explain that you were exhausted from the train and from helping Anna to move some furniture out of her old flat. You took a nap and slept through the rally.”

“I’m concerned because of that stuff Lydia sent, what if – my God I am sure it is already making its initial rounds of over-analysis on Reddit. Daddy is going to be so angry.”

She was likely correct in her assessment. John Andre would have loved to have been able to calm her fears by offering to vouch for her whereabouts, but he recognized without much consideration that were he to do so her problems would only escalate.

“I’ll call Abigail. If anyone asks she will say that I spent the night with her,” Peggy though aloud.

“I could -” Andre stared.

“No, it is … you don’t know my father. He can be so stubborn when it comes to whose company I keep. If it comes out -”

“I understand,” Andre said, hoping that he sounded more empathetic than relieved, “Can I call you?”

“I hope you will.”

 

* * *

 

Philomena tried to reach Senator Arnold three times before she and John decided it to give up. There was something different about him, something that a dalliance with debutant and an emotional affair with a missing senator didn’t explain. He seemed elated by the payment she’d demanded for her performance. He seemed his old self, the connection between them had briefly reemerged, which made what she was gathering the strength to confess all the more difficult.

“I’ve been saving this,” he said, producing a bottle of port from the open kitchen, “Looks like this will be my last chance. A final drink?” Without waiting for her to answer, he took two glasses from the cupboard. He came to sit by her on the floor behind the sofa, pouring the glasses half full and leaving the flash open on the bare wood floor.

Philomena grew quiet. She swirled the red liquid around without taking a sip. “When you come back from rehab, you should know that I won’t be here.”

“I do,” he nodded. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“I won’t ask you to sign until you’re ready, but I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do you truly love Charles?” Andre asked, putting his arm around her shoulders.

“No,” she answered honestly, snuggling up to him. “But he makes me happy. After you, happy is enough.”

“Things weren’t always this bad between us, were they?”

“They were. I was never your muse, John, but you’ve always been, and will likely always be mine. I don’t regret ‘us’.”

“Nor do I. Mena, for what little its worth, I’ve always loved you in my own fashion.”

“It is worth nothing, but it is nice to here.”

“I’m sorry,” he said with all sincerity.

“So am I.”

 

* * *

 

“I think I should go and talk to the police,” he said after finishing his second of three glasses.

“I don’t. You made a mistake, as people sometimes do. Assuming that Benedict Arnold was as fascinated with you are you are with yourself - which is a stretch I might add – if he took the rejection to the absolute extreme you’re imagining, it isn’t your fault. At an-”

“One of my patients recently tried to take his own life. I did nothing to stop it. I can’t avoid drawing parallels.”

Philomena didn’t know how to respond, so she simply fed him a line that was meant to sound encouraging, “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is. In a rather roundabout way it is the reason I was fired by Columbia. I saw all of the signs and rather than uphold my oath to do no harm I watched him spiral and recorded the effects on those closest to him as part of my research. A couple of weeks ago another patient called me on it in a social setting. He can’t possibly know just how correct he was in his assessment. Unless … no. Patient A, we’ll call him, is in complete denial, and even if he weren’t I find it extremely unlikely that he would confide in Patient B about such matters. I find it equally doubtful that B would feel comfortable starting or even taking part in a conversation about the event, set back as he seems to be from it.”

“Why not just call the Hewlett and Simcoe? Your friends aren’t that difficult to sort.”

“Why not?” he agreed, pouring himself another port, “I’ve broken every other rule, regulation and law governing the practice of medicine,” he said bitterly. John was quiet for serval minutes before calmly continuing on a separate though, “If Professor Dandridge decides to report me to the AMA I’m not going to fight it. I fully expect to lose my license over this, well, over the part where I overplayed my hand in an attempt to right my wrong.”

“I’m not clear on what you mean,” she said. _It is clear you need to talk about it_ , she meant. She rubbed the back of his neck as he spoke, wondering if the decision to grow his hair out had been entirely conscious.

“A few months ago I explained to one of the subjects of the research I’ve been carrying out in the University’s name, Patient A as it were, that I wanted to attempt to steadily reduce his dependency on a certain pharmaceutical substance I don’t believe ought to have been prescribed to him in the first place - given the way it has been known to react in clinical studies with other drugs he is taking for the treatment of a genetic circulatory condition. A is, shall we say, fellow man of science and it was as such that I addressed him in explaining the potential risks and side effects he may well have been unknowingly exposed to. Because there is a certain level of chemical dependency inherent in the drug the patient was prescribed by the NHS in the nineties when they were dosing it out to everyone, I thought it too much of a risk to simply cut him off or to make a switch to a generic alternative. I don’t believe he was as forthcoming in therapy at that time as I had come to anticipate. Had I known last fall how difficult he was finding it to cope with the heightened academic stress, I would never have … At any rate, I have reason to believe that he stopped taking the anti-anxiety drug altogether after that conversation. At least two prescriptions went unfilled.”

Philomena wondered if he was rehearsing for his meeting with Dr. Dandridge. “I don’t understand how you reckon that you ought to hold yourself responsible.”

“Rather than discussing it I let him continue. I watched him fall. When he asked me how much he would need to consume to end his miserable existence I answered him simply. A week later he tested my hypothesis to the milligram.”

Evidently a dress-rehearsal it was not, unless he truly intended to atone through punishment.

“Maybe it was an accident,” she offered.

“No one takes 14 pills on accident. Normally it should only have taken 12, as opposed to the 30 he would have needed without the blood thinners, but being as he took them over the course of 2 hours he even calculated for gradual diminish. I’m impressed by how much effort he put into saying sod off.”

“But you were wrong.”

“He rung an ambulance before passing out and he happened to be on campus, blocks away from one of the city’s top medical facilities. Admittedly, my failure to treat A as a patient, friend, or anything beyond an academic interest in the months leading up to his attempt is enough to call my right to practice phycology into question; what I did next in an attempt to compensate for my mistakes answers it. For reasons I don’t pretend to fully understand, Patient B is listed as A’s emergency medical contact. He, B that is, found out from the insurance agent on the receiving end of what I can reasonably assume to have been a verbal assault that A would lose his coverage in a few days’ time –no longer being a student. B asked me to help get A released from before he would accrue a list of charges for a hospital stay he could never hope to pay out of pocket. I complied.”

“You did the right thing.”

“I tried to. In the end I truly did. Do you recall that conversation we had a while back where you asked me if the man you assume to be A had any theater experience?”

“Because of the blocking he constantly seems to be engaging in? I am not sure how it is relevant unless you mean to say something about the suicide attempt had been staged somehow?”

“Were that the case. No. He, that is to say A, had a fairly sever stroke when he was 20 before the condition I have been reminded that am in no way licensed or qualified to treat was diagnosed, and a series of minor ones since. Despite years of physical therapy he is convinced left side of his face doesn’t move quite as fast as the right and it is less apparent if you observe him from that side. Mind, it’s not apparent at all until he’s mentioned it. But that’s why he won’t look directly at you, why he stands at off angles and had a car shipped over from Great Britain though it would have been less expensive to purchase the same model here.”

“That’s horrible.”

“I know. No one should ever be that self-conscious. We’ve had talks about it, off the couch as it were. He oughtn’t to be ashamed, but he needs to do better to keep his condition in check. He won’t live to see retirement as it is, with the way he chooses to live in terms of diet I should doubt that he will make it to 50. Completely untreated though? I hazard to think. Now, I am acquainted with a number of pharmaceutical reps as you well know. I used these connections to refill his medicine cabinet off the record. Of course, they wanted something in exchange. I didn’t hear my phone today when one of their number called to collected, and so he reached out to Martha with an invoice of my sins,” Andre’s voice switched from accepting to angry when he mentioned the involvement of his phone in the avoidable drama.

Philomena finished the remainder of her port in a single sip and asked, “Is that why you’ve been drunk for two months?”

“No. Nothing so poetic. I’m simply an alcoholic. You knew that when we married.”

Philomena thought about it for a moment.

“That’s what you need to tell her … Dr. Dandridge, I mean. Admit that you have a problem, that you are voluntarily checking yourself into a rehabilitation facility, essentially that you accept the consequences of your actions. She seems the sort of woman who would put some stock into that.”

“And you?” Andre smiled half-heartedly, having consumed enough wine that he was beginning to feel its effects through his built up resistance.

“Me? We’ve been married for seven years. I believe that you make promises in earnest and uphold them so long as it suits you.” She tussled his hair as he laid his head on her shoulder, finding a lock of hers still braided into it. He leaned up and their lips met. For the first time his kisses truly felt cold. It didn’t stop her from returning his embrace, nor did his confession about Peggy or the girls that had come before her, nor his text-based affair with a missing public official, nor his being fired or the events surrounding his termination; the same way her extended and almost public affair with one of her co-stars hadn’t caused him to put an end to nights like this; nights which sometimes turned to weeks or months. Not this time, Philomena swore to herself. In the morning she would take the first step to walking away from the disaster that was her marriage, but before the sun rose she wanted to be wanted.

“I love you,” he said, “Likewise,” she replied, neither of them wanting to acknowledge that they were trading in lies.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent too long with Andre in what was meant to be an opening to include half of the scenes I intended to in this chapter. Which works I suppose because Andre seems to have a lot of people confused, and also doesn’t because I had to omit most of the other personal narratives, each of which would have made this chapter hilarious (as opposed to almost sad, as I fear this update was.) 
> 
> They say comedy is tragedy plus time, so you’ll see what I mean next week. Hope you’ll stick around!
> 
> So … notes:
> 
> Pfizer: An international drug company headquartered in New York, NY
> 
> Oxbridge / Ivy: terms referring to elite, private universities 
> 
> redbrick educational background: schools which receive state funding, compare with above
> 
> bankers from Frankfurt: the ECB is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. I just like that there are Hessians in the show. What would a historical drama be without a German villain? (I also love that the most threatening thing they did was offer Abe Sauerkraut. The taste grows on you, I promise!) 
> 
> Striker: (soccer) a forward that is his team’s primary scoring threat 
> 
> NHS: Great Britain’s socialized healthcare system
> 
> -and a quick translation that wasn’t covered or otherwise clear from context-   
> “Die, was ich beherrschen kann, ist doch keinen Hochdeutsch. Apropos, wir können uns ja duzen, oder?"  
> "What I can speak isn’t standard German. By the way, we can refer to each other in familiar terms, don’t you agree?"  
> (We have two forms of the second person pronoun – I incorporated it into their English conversation by having Peggy switch from calling her date from his last name to his first. So it was kind of there if you knew what to look for. Speakers of different dialects have can have some trouble understanding one another. I personally like Swiss German, but sometimes when I am bored at work I’ll watch “Schwiizerdütsch Wetter” on YouTube for a laugh and highly recommend you do as well.)
> 
> Did I forget anything? Let me know. Visit me on tumblr or something. Comments and Kudos are fun and appreciated, but so are a lot of other things, which reminds me - Happy (belated) Independence Day to everyone in the United States! Hope you all had a great holiday weekend, and if your summer holidays are stating that you’ll be doing something you have been looking forward to! 
> 
> Thanks for the (unexpected) 400 hits! You guys rock. XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up Next: Versus


	8. The Bar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna and Hewlett have a long overdue conversation about intentions, romantic and otherwise.   
> Simcoe plays phone tag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Few warnings, nothing really too dramatic this go around when compared with the rest of the work. Sex, religiosity, money, business, falling short of expectations, suicide, illness, mental health, there is a racial slur, a few curse words, and masturbation while stuck in morning traffic.
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy!

Edmund Hewlett awoke to the sound of cannon-fire at seven o’clock on a crisp Wednesday morning. More than he was surprise at his fiancé’s wake-up call of choice, he was startled to discover that such a time existed outside of the realm of theory. Furthermore, he wondered how anyone could possibly force themselves into consciousness at that hour.

“Sorry,” Anna excused herself, “I really out to change my alarm.”

“To eight, nine perhaps?” Hewlett yawned.

Anna rolled over and kissed his cheek. “To something less startling.”

“That’s quite alright, love. I boarded at Duke of York’s, archaic battle soundtrack dose little to unnerve me. It is just … rather early for such a ruckus, would you not agree?”

“Military discipline didn’t stick with you then?” Anna stretched, awarding his complaint with a mocking smile.

“Name one offensive that required man to rise before the sun.”

“Remember the Alamo?” she teased before yawning herself.

“Refresh me,” he laughed, sitting up to kiss her cheek.

The pair had gone to bed less than five hours before after a spontaneous game had generated a long discussion, a discussion they had both put off for far too long. He never expected to wake up beside her. He had planned to sleep on the small sofa by the window -as he had most nights for the past two years- giving her the elegant bed wanting of comfort. It was she who had asked him to stay. He had barely been able to sleep with her arms draped around him, her purrs of affection giving way to light snores. Despite her reassurances he still didn’t feel that he had the capacity to provide her with all that she asked of him. Despite his doubt, he desperately wanted to love her in the same way she seemed to love him. Despite advice, forewarning and his own better judgement, he was worried that he already did.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

Anna’s smile filled the room with warmth. “Never better.”

“Ah, well, that is, I am happy to hear it.”

“I don’t normally have to get up this early, but Caleb rarely cleans when he takes the Tuesday night shift and I need to get the tavern ready for my day drinkers before they arrive at ten. Tomorrow,” she smiled, “we can sleep until half past eight.”

“Don’t you get home at a little after two?”

“Umm hmm.”

“Anna, darling, you’re simply not getting enough rest.”

“If it was within the budget to hire more people-” she began. Hewlett took this as his cue to step up.

“I’ll do everything in my power to make that a reality for you. After I finish at the court house and visit my embassy I’ll make an appointment at Barclay’s.”

“Is Simcoe your banker?” she asked, “That might prove useful.”

“No, no. I simply have an account there so it seems as decent place as any to start,” he thought for a moment on how to best caution her hopes. “Anna … I don’t want to mislead you with respect to my means,” he stressed, as he had repeatedly the night before. “I’ve never been able to afford John’s services and it is not as if he has ever been forthcoming in offering pro bono financial advice. Furthermore, he turned me down for a private personal loan not a month ago. Given my residency status, I question that his colleagues will be apt to accept the proposal despite what you may think based on your breach of...” not wanting to start another argument, he finished simply, “I will try my best.”

“You went to him for a loan?” Anna asked, her eyes widening slightly.

“Something small. Forty-thousand that I might avoid…” he looked at his sovereign ring handing on a leather cord between her large breasts which he had given to her in proposal, “At any rate, he said he wouldn’t invest without the guarantee of a return.” What Simcoe had actually said was that he it was in his personal interest to see him return to the UK in disgrace, but Hewlett hardly thought that relevant.

Anna followed his eyes to her latest accessory. She closed her eyes as she grasped it tightly in the hand that was too small to wear the ring as it was meant to be worn. “It’s not immigration fraud, Edmund. I do wish to marry you.”

Hewlett had reservations about every aspect of her claim but he forced himself to smile through them. With a little effort, he echoed her sentiment, “Your happiness is my priority, Anna.” His wide lips were forced shut when the woman he had known for little over a month, who, in turn, would soon be his wife, pressed her own against them. He leaned back when he felt her tongue’s initial attempts to pry them open, “Ah, Anna … dearest Anna. Not now”

“We are going to need to work on that.”

Their relationship had to look real for the sake of all parties involved, but must he truly be forced to work to that end at this hour? Hewlett knew from his very limited experience that Americans could be more forward in their affections than Brits, but this cusped on the ridiculous. Anna responded to his face’s twist of disgust by giving him a look that made him question his objections in their entirety.

“Um, yes, I suppose I’m rather out of practice.”

“You are a great kisser, you proved that much last night. You need to stop being so tense.” He felt her hands slip themselves under the back of his t-shirt as she pulled him closer. How could they be so very different and yet so very likeminded? They had both entered into this still awkward arrangement with the intent of improving their station. Hewlett had had the curtesy to be forthcoming with his intentions from the onset. Anna had seemingly fallen in love despite his objections –or she hadn’t and pretended to herself that the lies she told the world had some basis in truth to absolve herself of her own wrongdoings. Edmund wondered if it mattered. He liked her enough, and it would only be a year.

For the moment, however, a year seemed an eternity on so little sleep.

“It is seven in the morning and I’ve yet to brush my teeth,” he protested, gripping her gently by the shoulders and pushing her far enough away that she not fall victim to his morning breath.

“Oh. Oh! God, you must think I’m gross,” she correctly assumed, backing up another inch or so. “Sorry, let me ... God, I really need to shower.”

Hewlett instantly felt guilty for forcing his self-consciousness on his future wife. “Forgive me,” he said. “I never meant to imply … I, fear I may be ‘gross’ too, as you so put it.” She gave him an unconvincing smile. It had been too long since he had been someone’s significant other. Once more he struggled for what to say. “Ah - I’m simply tired. Can I make you a tea, breakfast?”

“Coffee, black, and no need, we still have some of the pizza from last night in your mini-fridge. I’ll just eat that before I head out.”

“Ought I to go downstairs and microwave it for you?” he offered.

“What are you talking about? Cold pizza is the best! If you nuke it, the crust will get soggy and the toppings will dry out.”

Edmund was recovering from the idea that anyone would consider yesterday’s take-away a proper breakfast. Eating it cold as a matter of preference was incomprehensible. He couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.

“As you wish.”

“And Edmund? I don’t want you eating anything too high in cholesterol. Please. For me.”

So it was to be a real marriage in every sense weather he wanted it to be or not. He sighed, then nodded, then returned the quick kiss on the cheek she gave him before she rose from their shared bed.

After Anna left to take a shower, disregarding the clothes she had slept in on the floor, Hewlett laid back down and closed his eyes, blissfully forgetting the black coffee and cold pizza. He was on the verge of sleep when Anna’s phone again alerted him to its existence. There was no gunfire this time. By the fourth ring he realized that the shrill sound was coming from his own device. He answered with his family name without reading the number.

“Good morning, Edmund,” a high, chipper voice replied.

“Mum? It’s really, really early here. Can I ring you back in an hour or so?”

“I’m afraid this can’t wait. And … mum? Really?”

John Graves Simcoe had phoned him all of six times during the entire course of their relationship. He had referred to Hewlett by his given name twice, once shortly after they had first met and once when he had recently been in hospital.

“Edmund, really?”

“Would you prefer I called you Oyster?” Simcoe bit back in mock-concern. Hewlett rubbed his eyes.

“I would prefer that you didn’t call me at all before … nine o’clock, shall we say.”

“Some of us have careers to concern ourselves with.”

Ah, there was the devil that he knew.

“What do you want, John?”

“I need to get in touch with Mary Woodhull, would you be ever so kind as to provide me with her number?” Something was clearly wrong when Simcoe was being this courteous. Hewlett check the number, questioning if the call was coming from a hospital room or a jail cell. Seeing instead a saved contact on his screen, he thought for a moment about what had just been asked of him.

“Mary Woodhull?” Hewlett clarified, half certain he had misunderstood.

“Your housemate,” Simcoe affirmed.

“I can check to see if she is around.” Hewlett replied, stretching as he stood up. “Wait … I’ve to put some clothes on first.”

“Ugh. Mate … no.”

“You know it’s not like that,” he said, slipping off his pyjama bottoms and into yesterday’s jeans which were neatly folded and set upon his dresser. Thinking back to Anna’s confessed imaginings of how she assumed him to behave in bed, he assured his rival, “As luck would have it, I don’t think Miss Strong finds me particularly attractive in any sort of sexual sense you may be imagining.”

“I find it something of a stretch to believe that you yourself ever thought she would, or that you believe I’ve any interest in discussing the matter further. Now, if you please, just give me the number.”

Hewlett laid the phone on the dresser as he pulled a black cashmere sweater over his head. He looked at himself in the mirror, tousling his now messy dark hair as Anna had the night before, commenting that he looked better that way. He wasn’t convinced.

“I did take your advice, by the way,” he said, returning his mobile to his ear.

“My advice?”

“Talked to Anna.”

“And, how’d she take it?”

“Better than expected.”

“Hm.”

The line was silent for a minute.

“Listen, entertaining as this little heart to heart has been, I really must make contact with Mrs. Woodhull. Time is of the essence.” Hewlett heard Simcoe’s fingers tapping, or perhaps typing, rather nervously. He wondered if the other man was already at the office and glanced at his Rolex -7:34. Simcoe really had a talent for silently making him aware of his shortcomings.

“What business could you possibly have with my house mate that would require you to talk to her before she’s likely finished breakfast? What business could you possibly have with her at all for that matter?”

“Not that it is any of your concern whatsoever,” he paused, perhaps in dramatic flair, for a rather long while, “but she and I met recently to discuss her stock portfolio,” Simcoe stated finally, so calmly that it forced Hewlett to question the very authenticity of his claim.

“So you are in personal finance now?”

“I do favours sometimes.”

“In that case-”

“Not for you.”

Hewlett hadn’t been serious, but if there was any chance that his beloved enemy was attempting to assist a woman whom he must have just recently made to acquaintance of, than surely he would also be willing to help rescue the one who deepened the division between the two them, the one they both professed to being in love with.

“It not for me,” he spat, hating himself for suddenly hoping that Simcoe continued to be enamoured with the soon-to-be Mrs. Hewlett, “Come, we both know that. I’m just,” he sighed, knowing exactly what he could anticipate “I’m trying to get a half million together for Anna.” He heard Simcoe choke on a laugh, as he’d well expected for him to do. “Can we perhaps lunch sometime this week?” he continued, “I don’t need your money per se, but I would be willing to hear your advice.”

“I’m a bit busy at the moment … it is difficult to say when my schedule will clear up, but if you want a base opinion – whatever happened last night, negotiating you up from ten to five hundred thousand dollars is not –as you claim- your little talk having gone _better than expected_. Don’t marry her.”

“Ah, Simcoe … it is not what you think. I don’t wish to speak of this matter over the phone with Anna in the next room. Please. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t urgent.”

“I feel for you, truly Edmund, I do, but you’ve heard my advice a hundred times and chosen to ignore it. You blatantly disregard all of the evidence that doesn’t support your hypothesis of, I suppose, John Andre is always right,” the sarcasm was almost palatable. Hewlett rolled his eyes. “That is just bad science, Doctor H – oh, wait. Who am I to tell you anything about bad science? I’d almost forgotten that was your specialty.”

Hewlett took a deep breath. It was way too early for this.

“Yes well … love defies logic as they say.”

 

* * *

 

“We took the same route on the Tube, glancing at each other for months before either of us gathered the courage to speak; she bumped into me on accident and I commented on the impracticality of her heels, she made a remark about my blazer and the next thing I knew I was stripping out of it, frantically kissing the nape of her neck as I pulled down her nickers,” he explained, trying to sound confident enough in his rendition of the story he had skimmed to pass it off as his first time.

“Let me guess,” Anna challenged, clearly unamused, “she left the shoes on while you fucked her blind before her stop.”

Hewlett hoped she was simply jealous of the woman he’d forgotten to name. “Well, ah …” he stammered for a moment before being taken out of his misery.

“You know, I did read this magazine before suggesting we take the quiz.”

The pair had made a game from an article in a women’s glossy entitled _100 Questions You Should Ask Before You Tie the Knot_. Rather than go in order, Edmund suggested that they roll dice. The initial role would provide the base value, after which a twenty-sider -which she’d mocked him for having-would determine the next question. The player’s opponent, as it were, would then roll a six-sider to indicate if one should add – for even number values, or subtract – for odd. They would then both answer the question, switch dice, and keep playing. If they happened to arrive on a question they had already answered or otherwise thought they knew the answer to, they could try to attempt to win a point by answering it as their partner would. In Hewlett’s mind, it was good practice for the interviews they would be given by the immigration police. Anna, whose sprit of competition he had vastly underestimated, had been thus far destroying him, even prior to arriving on one of the questions he was rather hoping to avoid and sequently trying to sell a story from the same issue of _Cosmopolitan_ as his own.

“Edmund,” she continued, “I can deal with the near constant avoidance, I can live with vagueness, but this is clearly a lie. No one’s first time involves bringing a fashion executive to multiple orgasms while riding the damn subway. I know I make you uncomfortable somehow and I respect if you want to skip this altogether, but honestly? We’re living together in a crowded space, I am going to be your wife in a few weeks and you still can’t even look directly at me. I know you want to keep things platonic but you know that we have to make this look genuine and that may prove difficult if you persist in dodging anything and everything remotely intimate. You can talk for hours about the external forces that stimulate you so, but sharing a memory that relies on more than just a list of facts – why do you of all people find this task so difficult?”

He apologized when he found himself without a more suited response.

“I’ll tell you about your first time and you’ll tell me if I’m right.” Hewlett sighed. Anna went on, “You went on a date or two with a girl who had you doing her homework. In a moment of guilt or gratitude she took you in her dorm. There were no candles, no rose petals, just light flowing in through venetian blinds exposing the wear on her furniture. It was nothing like you had hoped or imagined. She moved a pile of clothes off the bed and it all happened so fast that all you distinctly remember is how you cried afterwards in the shower you immediately took to wash yourself of sin.”

He was appalled and offended, though in truth Anna’s fantasy was far preferable to the reality he knew. “That is what you suppose I’m like in bed?” he gaped, “Anna I’m a lot of things, but heavens! I’m not Catholic.”

“No? I assumed after hearing you recite the Pater Noster in Latin,” she shrugged, “And, for the record Mister, _I_ didn’t cry in the shower after Abe Woodhull took me on a bed very much like the one right over there, just down the hall,” she pointed. “I was sixteen. It was horrible, as everyone’s first time is. We were both nervous and just sort of mimicked things we’d seen in porn or been told by our friends. But, I thought it was heaven, having no point of comparison.”

“You’ve an ear for language,” Hewlett tried to compliment her, wishing to end the subject and to forget every word she had just spoken about young Abraham.

“I’ve an ear for everything, I have a legal background.”

“And … ah … a Catholic one?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Is that a deal breaker?”

It might have been if she were anyone else. Unwilling to admit this, he stammered, “No, no, I’m, um, just trying to skip ahead it seems.”

“I’m from Long Island. I’m largely agnostic and attend mass at Christmas ever year or two if my little brother is spending the holiday with our mother and she feels like putting on airs. You?”

“Eaglais na h-Alba, or simply, the Kirk, which you might know as the Church of Scotland - Protestant, Calvinist leaning. I suppose I’d call myself devout if it were not for the Premiership’s insistence on scheduling all of the good fixtures on Sunday morning.”

“So when it otherwise suits you, much like myself.”

“Sure.”

Anna went on to ask how good his Gaelic was after repeating the few words he had spoken. His mother had originally come from the Western Islands, he’d answered, before moving to the mainland to attend university. She had grown up in a bilingual household, he – unfortunately- had not, due largely to his own lack of interest in the subject. Still, Mrs. Hewlett had yelled at her children often enough in the language of their forefathers that he had very little difficulty understanding Robert Rogers when he was piss drunk either on ale or on one of his long-standing resentments.

“Your mother sounds fascinating.”

“I think you’ll get on. She is compassionate and strong, not unlike yourself.”

“Will I meet her?”

“If it pleases you, I suppose.”

“Have you told her about us?”

“I’ve told her about you.”

“Nothing good I hope.”

He stared at her warmly. In spite of all of their differences, what else would he possibly have to say?

Hewlett pulled up the email he had sent his mother on his phone in praise of Anna’s beauty, strength and virtue for her to read and judge herself. He’d called her by far the most interesting, intelligent and captivating person he had ever met and claimed that he was honoured that she’d accepted his invitation to explore their special friendship to see if it could blossom into something more. He’d mentioned that she had gone to law school at the same university that was keeping him in America, though, truth be told, after getting to know her he was in less of a rush to return to Scottish shores. She managed a bar in the town where he was living, a place that felt central to the community in a manner that was surprisingly rare on this side of the Atlantic. He hoped one day to bring her back with him to Edinburgh. In his sign off, he’d said that he was certain the she and father would fall every bit as in love with her as he had.

He watched her carefully as she read, trying to guess the passages where her eyes would stop, pool with tears, and read again before moving on.

“Do you mean this?”

Every word, he longed to say. “The part about bringing you back with me to Scotland? Anna, Setauket is your home. I know I can’t simply take you from this place. Truth be told, you are the only person I’ve ever met who holds any great love for their home town,” he replied instead.

“And the rest of it?” she inquired, sounding more sad than curious.

“Ah, I … it – our relationship that is - it has to look real.”

“Sure,” Anna said as she rolled the dice again. Thirteen.

“Are we counting from religious denomination or first time?” Edmund asked, rolling a four.

“First time. I guess,” she replied, taking the magazine in her hands and flipping to the next page. “Do you believe in Karma?”

 

* * *

 

After a few more rolls, questions answered and points attempted, Anna posed a question of her own.

“Don’t you think it cruel to tell your mother you’ve fallen in love with a girl she’d love when you plan to divorce me as soon as you get your PhD?”

“No, she knows from experience to temper her expectations.” he rubbed his temples. Simcoe was right. He had to have this conversation with her eventually, and preferably before her crush turned into something less perishable, “Have you told your parents about me?”

“Yes. Well, my dad. My mother hardly let me get a sentence out before telling me that I needed to spend less time worrying about boys and more time worry about passing the bar.”

“Oh.”

“My father wanted to know if you make me happy and if it was possible that Abigail was writing erotic fiction about our romance.”

Hewlett blinked. “Can you repeat that?”

“I told him yes to the first and no to the second - a lie but I don’t want to put my dad in therapy, you know?”

“You mean to tell me that um, your father is reading erotic fiction? About you and me, written by your best friend? That make things slightly awkward I’ll admit.” Hewlett decided he would prefer to never dive down to DC to introduce himself Anna’s father, and to the same end he needed to return to therapy himself -preferably at a different practice as to avoid the woman who seemed set on sending him into prolonged treatment. He wondered what he had ever done to make her hate him so.

Anna laughed, reading this from his expression.

“You didn’t know about Abigail? I mean, it is not directly about us, it is about a beer wrench during the American Revolution who works as a spy for the Continental Army and falls in love with the Major occupying her town. A lot of it is about doing laundry, actually.”

Hewlett considered what he had just been told for several minutes in complete silence.

“Say something,” Anna urged.

“This Major wouldn’t have been occupying the town being that it belonged to the crown. I assume the poor fool was rather trying to reinstate law, order, and authority to a people for whom these ideals had been lost. I truly hope that your friend didn’t use a noun like ‘occupier’ in her characterization of the figure I assume to be based on me, if only because it rings of historical inaccuracy.”

“I’m not going to lie, much of it does. I can send you the link if you want though.”

“Please,” Hewlett requested. He would come to regret it.

 

* * *

 

“I love your indignation,” Anna laughed later on after the game had been retired for the evening with her leading by 5 points. Hewlett skimmed the spy periodical. His bride contented herself by flipping through his various sketch books trying to guess which anime or manga the girl he kept drawing was from. They are all you, he wanted to say. Instead he just nodded in affirmation to a few of her suggestions as he continued reading. The story’s primary antagonist reminded him in most ways of a red-clad Simcoe brandishing a bayonet at anyone who crossed him; something which would have been hilarious in and of itself, had it not been terrifying in that Hewlett could see himself meeting a very similar end at the hands of the character’s obvious inspiration if he didn’t find a way back to the conversation he had become so skilled at dodging that he now did so unconsciously. Anna was sitting next to him on the small pull out sofa meant for one that he could feel the warmth of her skin against his chill. He closed his laptop and took a deep breath.

“I promised Simcoe - well, no, I shouldn’t drag anyone else into this. Ultimately it falls only on me.” Anna looked up from the various poorly drawn Anna-me figures, giving him her full attention. Hewlett swallowed. “I have a problem that I doubt I’ll be able to hide indefinitely and I ought to have addressed it with you sooner.”

“I know,” she said solemnly.

“You do?”

“About the suicide attempt. If that is what you are talking about.” It wasn’t. She reached for his hand. He pulled it away.

“Ah, I’m not sure where you could have possibly gotten that information, but I can but guarantee that you’ve been ill informed.”

“From a reliable source.”

This was curious as he had never actually spoken about the ordeal. He couldn’t imagine even his other housemates knowing about his self-obstructed endeavor to exit on his own terms.

“Who then?” he asked. “Unless doctor/patient confidentiality counts for nothing in this land and you are familiar with someone who happened to be working in the ER, I can only think of two people who even know about the incident to which I assume you are referring.” He tried to temper his tone. “I’m not upset, not with you, never with you; it is only that of the people who know, Andre has recently made it all too clear he couldn’t give a damn about me. Simcoe, in contrast, has been arguing with me over SMS for the past two months about number theory because he can’t bear to ask >> _How could you?_ <<, and I in turn can’t force myself to say >> _I’m sorry_ << because, in truth, I’m not. And so,” he took his phone off of the charger and handed her his phone, inviting her to scroll through two months’ worth of messages if she so chose. Anna kept her enormous eyes fixed on him. “I find it highly unlikely that he would mention that episode to someone else, especially someone he wants to appear strong in front of.”

“Abigail told me. Please don’t say-”

“I won’t,” he reached for her hand this time, trying to reassure her of that fact, “It is not as if I have anyone to talk to about it anyway.”

“You have me,” Anna whispered to herself. Raising her volume slightly, she turned back to him and continued, “When you say that you are not sorry about-”

Hewlett laughed. “I’m not in crisis as they say, dearest. I never was. You needn’t worry.”

Anna didn’t return his smile, forcing it into a retreat.

“How close did I come to never being given the opportunity to know you?” she asked, her voice quivering slightly.

“One faculty vote?” he suggested, trying to lighten her mood.

“What?”

“My dissertation.”

“And that’s why you…?”

“No, no.” It was now or never. On one hand, Hewlett didn’t think himself capable of actually lowering her opinion of him, on the other, he didn’t want to force Anna to admit to herself that her crush was an embarrassment – evidence that she had fallen perhaps even further than he himself had.

She looked at him with a pity he could have done without.

“I have a rare abnormality in my genetic code, the CECR1 gene if we are being specific. It was originally misdiagnosed when I was a teenager, and as a result I suffered a stroke at twenty. It had nothing to do with diet or lifestyle, ischemic strokes are just the most dangerous symptom of Sneddon Syndrome, among, admittedly, a host of other inconvenient aliments I’m forced to manage. Since then I’ve only really suffered small transient ischemic attacks, and the last I had of those was six years ago. It is more something to worry one’s self about in youth, although I am sure I will be on medication for the rest of my life. With regards to whatever story you might have heard; the truth is that I shouldn’t have tried to defend my thesis this past semester. I knew I wasn’t ready before going into the oral exam, though, comically, it has taken me a very long time to admit it,” he tried to force his lips into a reassuring smile. Whatever form they took instead seemed to have the opposite effect.

“I took a few too many anti-anxiety pills before going in. Ah – I wanted to calm down, not, as, you may have heard to die in that moment, at least. I needed to calm down. If I’m being honest what I truly needed was more revision and more time and to have filled out my visa application back in November … but that is hardly relevant I suppose. At any rate, forgetting in a moment of panic that my blood thinners can enhance the drug’s potency, I may have taken too many. I was dizzy, confused, and numb within a half an hour. Then it ended. I thought I was having another stoke and seeking a less painful obliteration I swallowed the rest of the bottle. In a moment of clarity I rung an ambulance. Turns out, I was just having a good old fashioned panic attack. No paralysis or resulting extensive physical therapy, no lasting neurological deficits. I’m fine. I want to live just … not in the state which I feared may have been the only one open to me. I’m fine, love.”

Anna wasn’t. “How dare you, sir? Seriously, how the fuck-” she hissed. Of the range of emotions in which she could have reacted, anger was the last that he had awaited.

“Darling, I -”

“No. No. You listen to me. How…”

He wanted to obey her demand but she seemed unable to continue.

“Anna, it doesn’t affect me. In most ways I can and do still lead a normal life. I work, I’m working –still- on my bloody post-graduate degree, I do sport, I get into to all sorts of trouble with the lads. In my day to day there are only very small manifestations of my ailment. I, for example … find it difficult to look at people directly, something I know you’ve noticed.” Anna shook her head in disapproval. “Everyone I know, who knows, assures me it is not noticeable but I fear that, well, if someone were to look at me for too long they would see-”

“Did no one ever tell you that you are beautiful?” she interjected. He hadn’t expected her to comment so favorably on his looks either.

“Um.”

“Because you are. You are handsome, Edmund. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your face. I love your face,” she claimed, reaching up to stroke it. Hewlett was paralyzed. Anna continued, “You are handsome and brilliant and kind and decent and yet … conceded, condescending, paranoid, patronizing and completely full of shit,” she patted him on the cheek, a little too hard, “Grow the fuck up.”

He opened his mouth to speak but Anna’s words filled the room before his could form.

“I too note the hypocrisy in me of all people telling you to act like an adult, but knowing what you know about whatever genetic predisposition you have and smoking? Eating the kinds of food you do? Do you have no idea how much people love you?”

If nothing else, Hewlett thought to himself, his parents would -as he had claimed- absolutely adore her. He felt like a child. She was scolding him as if he were. Perhaps he deserved it.

“I … it is only social-”

“Well it is going to stop. If you think for a moment that I am going to allow-”

It was more than he could bear.

“It is a paper marriage, Anna. You need to let go of this concern for me. I need to quit you as well, I fear. Not … not that if things were even slightly different I wouldn’t … I do, very much in fact …”

“What are you saying?”

“I doubt that I will ever be enough for you. Romantically … Physically, above all else. I don’t wish to see you hurt or disappointed. You are giving up a year for me. You needn’t give me your heart as well.”

“Don’t you think that I ought to be allowed to be the judge of that?”

“Alright, counsel Strong. Earlier, when I was telling you about my first time, I lied. In truth I - I’m a virgin and I am ashamed of that fact. Around you, mostly.”

“I assumed as much.”

“Ah … really?”

“Initially I confess I thought it a religious thing.”

“Ah, well, yes I suppose Kirk doctrine would dictate such. Although that is hardly my principle concern, Anna we’re, you and I, we can’t… I can’t rather. Because of the medication I take I _can’t_ -”

Anna raised her hand to her mouth, covering a small giggle. Hewlett turned away from her, burring his head in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. He felt her fingers dance up his back until they reached his neck. “Be honest with me.”

“With the sole exception of the article I orally plagiarized I’ve been nothing but. Do you imagine, Miss Strong, that this isn’t difficult for me? To trust you with my closest held secrets only to have them be met with laughter? Did you truly me celibate by choice?”

She ran her fingers through his hair, “Be honest with me, is that why you’ve shot down my every attempt to flirt with you? Sex? Edmund, I’m no medical expert, but I am pretty sure they make a pill for that too.”

Hewlett straightened his posture and looked at her directly when he finished laughing at her little tease. She laughed when their eyes met, which forced him into an involuntary echo. For a moment he couldn’t remember what it was about her –what about being open with her– had caused him such dread.

“You know I’m falling love you, despite all of the reasons you use in an attempt to dissuade me. Correct me if I’m wrong, Edmund, but I think you feel the same.”

She wasn’t mistaken, not entirely.

“In a year I’ll be gone, you’ll be here. There are so many factors that hold me back, Anna, but I notice you. I hear what you say and I am honored by and appreciative of all of it. I don’t know that I am there yet - emotionally, where you claim to be. Maybe your right, maybe everyone is for that matter, that this is psychological on some level and I need to ‘get over myself’. I like you. I want to love you and I want to quit you at all the same time. I haven’t been in anything that could constitute as a relationship in over ten years, I’m not entirely sure what I am doing and I never meant, and never want, to lead you on. I like you though, and I want to make your happiness my priority.”

He leaned in to kiss her, unaware that he would shortly regret the last words he spoke.

 

* * *

 

An hour later they were laying in Anna’s new bed in each other’s arms when Hewlett’s phone buzzed.

“What is it?” she asked drearily.

“Simcoe.”

“At this hour?”

“It isn’t atypical of him.”

“More math? He really does care about you, you know, in his own way.”

At some point, Hewlett reasoned, he would need to explain how rivalries functioned.

“No … now he is giving me advice about the INS. Curious, I assumed he would be so pissed over the move that he would decline to speak to me for the rest of the week. But then maybe I read too much into Abigail’s historical drama.”

“Me too. I think you guys have suppressed feelings for one another. The Oyster Major and the Mad Dog Captain, a love that dare not speak its name.”

“How? … What can I do to convince you that that is not remotely the case?” his face twisted in disgust.

“Kidding!”

“Apropos, Abby called me Oyster?” He wondered how many people Simcoe now had using that epithet.

The phone light up again with another WhatsApp message. “You got the affidavits from Caleb and Abigail, right?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful.” He set the phone back down after turning off the notifications.

“Do you know what I am most afraid of?” Anna asked when he turned back to her.

“Heights?” he ventured.

“Happiness. I think I am afraid, or was afraid for a very long time, to simply be happy, with you, with my job, with my dreams or with myself. Knowing you has changed that somehow, and yet … when this started out, I was using you. I don’t want to be, but I still am. And that scares me too.”

“I know,” he smiled. “Come now love, our first conversation began with me asking you to marry me for a sum of $10,000. That doesn’t … make me want to be with you any less.”

“I don’t want your money. I wish I could do this for you without asking anything in exchange but … do remember when we said that we would starting looking for a new place at the end of the month? I actually already know of the perfect location.”

“Well, that’s glorious. Tell me about it. Do you think it will still be on the market when I can afford another move?”

“We could live there rent free but, oh God. Do you remember how I was almost brought to tears by the letter you’d written to your mother? You know what part really got to me? When you talked about the tavern. I passed the bar two years ago on my first attempt. I am licensed to practice law in the states of New York and Connecticut. I don’t because I really, really love the job I have now. I know I is stupid but-”

“How can I help?”

“Really, just like that?”

“I think you would make an excellent barrister, Anna. I’ve always believed that. But I know for a fact that you are among the best bartenders I’ve ever been served by and if that is what you would rather be doing, there is no need for further litigation. You can keep your job. We can move closer to the tavern.”

“I want to buy it,” she corrected as she embraced him. “I want to own the business and the building where it is housed. We could turn the empty upstairs offices into an apartment and live there. It is out in the middle of nowhere so you could mount your telescope and look at the night sky while I work. Mr. DeJong has been trying to sell for an age. I know he would sell to me if I could get the capital together. That is where you come in.”

“How … how much exactly?”

“Half a million.”

He wondered if she had been lying in all of the things she’d meant to be indicative of her growing love. He questioned if he had any right to resent her for it.

“Anna, I have about $40,000 in liquid assets at the moment. Even if I sold my car, my stocks and my horses back in Scotland I still wouldn’t break $200,000. And I’ve still to pay rent and utilities. And my tuition next semester. And I’ve to make certain I’ve enough to cover the costs of health care. My means are humbler than you may have been lead to believe, and for that I am truly sorry.”

“I’m not asking for your money. I am asking for your signature. I am $35,000 in student debt and it isn’t like I can ask my parents for a loan. My brother is still in school. And beyond that, I mean, my folks literally divorced so that I could study law and then to turn to them and say I want to run a dive bar instead? I can’t. Not yet. But I’ve made a business plan - in three years I’ll will have paid off all of my debt and I will own the business outright. You’ve seen how I run the place. If I had the liberty to make a few changes I could double our profits.”

“I … I don’t doubt it. I am still confused about what exactly you are asking of me though.”

“You are the only person who has ever believed in my dreams. The only person who has ever treated my choice of employment with any level of respect. My friends all make fun of me for pouring so much time into that place. But … I can’t give it up. If you’re willing,” she said hopefully, “we will apply for a small business loan together and when we divorce - if there is any outstanding debt- I will assume it.”

Hewlett thought of all the reasons he should say no.

“Given my current residency status-”

“You have a valid New York address and I ran a credit check. You’d get approval.”

“You ran a credit check?” he gaped.

“Edmund, I would marry you regardless -”

“You ran a credit check?” he clarified again, “Without my signature? Tell me, how fictive is Abigail’s periodical? _Is everyone in this town in truth a forger or a spy?_ ”

 

* * *

 

“Oyster … are you even paying attention?”

He wasn’t. The sound of running water had stopped. White steam escaped into the room as the bathroom door opened.

“Hey,” Anna’s rich voice called out to him, “Can you do me a favor and run out to my car? I think I may have left my hair dryer in the back seat.”

“I’m going to have to call you back. My fiancé asks so much of me.” Fiancé, the word filled him with resentment, but felt wonderful to say.

“Who is she?” Anna asked playfully pointing to the phone pressed against Hewlett’s ear, as she approached wearing nothing but a towel and his ring.

“Simcoe. He just sounds like a bird over mobile. Normally he sticks to texting.”

“Hi John,” she said loud enough for Simcoe to hear and respond to her greeting. “Edmund, where is my promised coffee?”

“Um.”

“Say goodbye to your side-hoe and join me for breakfast?”

“Side-hoe?”

“You know … like, someone you’re seeing outside of your established relationship. It was a joke. Another bad one I’m afraid.”

“Side-hoe,” Hewlett repeated, “Side-hoe … Simhoe,” he said into the receiver, “This actually isn’t the first time she’s brought this up, if you can believe it.” He heard Simcoe choke. “Changing your contact name, mate.”

“Not bad, not bad. Preferable to Paki at any rate.”

“Corrected that not two minutes after you strangled me for it.”

“Right … good times, and right well deserved you shite. What did you have me down as then?”

“Demon, you know, my go to.”

“I had you down as Oyster for an age.”

“Why is it so hard for boys to grow up?” Anna asked. Whether she meant it rhetorically or not, Hewlett didn’t answer. He was enjoying the conversation that echoed of better days too much.

“What is it now?” he asked.

“Mesut Hewzil.”

“Right then?”

“Off Arsenal’s Özil. Only other man I can think of with such oddly amphibious features.”

“No I get it.”

“Not my best work. I’m changing you to Hewlot, off harlot. Hm. Worked better in my head. I concede this round, forgive me I’m undone by exhaustion. Now, before you run off to pour dear Anna the bubbly your pretending is champagne to drink with the German caviar your pretending is Russian, do us a favour and kindly text me the number to Mrs. Woodhull.”

He still failed to understand what Simcoe could possibly want with Mary, despite his claims of helping her with her personal finances. He didn’t imagine that his favourite Woodhull would be all too happy to receive a call from the demon who plagued him, but looking at Anna, he felt that he would sell his very soul for her. Mary Woodhull’s comfort and convince fell off his list of priorities.

“Give me an appointment and the number is yours.”

“You are going to loath whatever I have to say,” Simcoe assured him.

“That is nearly always the case but it is hardly the question – have we a deal or not?”

“I’ll pencil you in when I get to the office.”

“When you … Where are you now?”

“Why … just outside Setauket,” he replied happily. “I finally understand the complaints of your lot -traffic is really awful trying to get back to the city this time of day.”

“Did you spend the night out here or something?”

“With the most amazing woman I’ve ever encountered.”

“With … Mary Woodhull?”

“Unlike yourself Oyster, I’ve the class not to kiss and tell.”

 

* * *

 

Mary Woodhull sat in morning traffic, her son Thomas asleep in the child’s car seat in the back. She was gazing at him through her rear-view mirror, envying his slumber, when her stereo told her she had an incoming call from an unlisted number. She accepted, half hoping that Abe was calling to beg her forgiveness, half dreading the sound of her husband’s voice. Be that as it may, there was nothing on the radio but news and speculation surrounding Senator Arnold’s disappearance, and the only CD she had in her car was the soundtrack to _Frozen_ , which was proving every bit as annoying as it had been when she’d bought for Thomas as a toddler. Outside, sitting cars honked at other sitting cars as if sound could somehow quicken the pace of time. Any conversation whatsoever would provide her with the distraction she was longing for. When a woman addressed her she allowed herself to hope that it was someone from her son’s school calling to inform her that class had been cancelled, giving her an excuse to call her boss with an excuse, turn the car around and sleep until noon.

“Mrs. Woodhull?” the high voice asked, “I apologize for ringing you at this hour. I obtained your number from Hewlett, I hope you don’t mind. It is rather an emergency.”

“John?” she asked. It wasn’t one of the assistant principals of Thomas’s school as she’d hoped, but she was elated all the same. She had wanted to get Simcoe’s number from her housemate’s herself, but coming home to an empty bed, she had taken a long bath and left the instant Abe came home from who knows where in the early morning with her car, their only car, clearly under the influence. She had grabbed her son and fled before saying something she might later regret. As a result she had an hour to kill and nothing to occupy her but the questions of where Senator Arnold had gone off too, and if she hadn’t played a role in killing him, if she would have had the courage to fill up the gas tank and chase the sun across the country. Alas, leaving now would look suspicious. At least she had a friend.

“Mary, I fear our business may not be concluded after all. I spent the wee hours of the morning with an Officer Bradford, convincing him of the alibi we’d agreed upon. I suspect that you’ll be asked to collaborate.”

Alibi? Forget friend, Simcoe was clearly and idiot. He’d gotten himself arrested in connection to a high profile missing person’s case and was throwing around vocabulary that did little to make him look less suspect. What if his line was bugged? She could turn this around.

Mary blinked, “Alibi? Oh John, I don’t know how long I can play these games. It is you I want, you I want to be with. Who cares what people will think?”

“Excuse me?” he paused, “Oh. OH. That’s brilliant, I … quite desire you as well.”

“Where are you now?” she asked dramatically.

“I’m just driving back into the city,” he answered bluntly.

Okay, they could play this differently.

“Me too. Where are you?”

“Still on 495.”

“Have you passed the Jericho exit yet?”

“No, I’m coming up on it.”

“Take it, we can meet up and resume things where we left them. As it works out, I was rather hoping you’d call.”

Simcoe was speechless.

“I’m not trying to sound presumptuous, but can I buy you a real cup of coffee?” She wasn’t sure if she was actually flirting or not. It had to look genuine. Given Abe’s recent behaviour it shouldn’t be too difficult to convince anyone that she would stray, after all, she had spent the majority of their marriage convincing herself to remain.

“I’d … rather like that.”

“Are you familiar with the area?”

“Enough.”

“Meet me at Starbucks?”

“Sure.”

Mary looked back to make sure Thomas was still asleep. She pulled out the dildo she had stowed in her glove compartment for such an occasion as murdering a man with an attractive stranger or Weezy dropping a new single. She twisted to unzip her pencil skirt until she could open her legs wide enough to make the call worth her time.

“And John? Until I get there, can you do me a favour and remind me of _exactly_ what you did to me last night? This morning has been awful for me as well, let me relive last night’s clandestine passion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe you guys some notes for this long, dialog heavy chapter, but in the theme of honesty, I am just way too tired. In general though, don’t judge people based on religious denomination or anything else for that matter, take your drugs as prescribed, don’t call anyone before nine in the morning, avoid racial slurs, take appropriate measures towards your own health and wellbeing, recognize your limitations, keep a dildo in your glove box if you have a long commute, and leave comments and kudos if you are thus inclined.
> 
> Thanks for reading, I love you guys! XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up next: Ben gets a search warrant, Mary and Simcoe get coffee, Anna gets some devastating news


	9. The Francophones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simcoe finds himself between a rock and a hard place, or, more directly put, between the rather unfortunately named Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Manhattan field office and the woman with whom he may or may not have murdered a US Senator hours before.  
> Meanwhile, Hewlett finds himself faced with a judge ready to bring charges of immigration fraud against him and three international secret service agents at his door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only have a short update for you this week, lovely faces, and thusly a correspondingly short list of warnings: Starbucks, musical theater references, phone sex, fake filtration, true live, real crime.
> 
> Nothing too severe. Enjoy!

John Graves Simcoe was beginning to reconsider his stance on telephone conversation when he noticed the two Frenchmen smile and wink at him, causing his face to flush and his stomach to turn. He had been standing on line at a Long Island Starbucks for the past twenty minutes waiting for his accomplice to show up. >>What do you want?<< he had whispered moments before, having already attracted the unwanted attention of all the good people of the world happy and willing to trade their liquid funds for lacto-based liquid fuel as he tried to figure out the rules to a game he had never played before. It took him about five minutes to understand that she was asking him to describe sexual acts to her, another ten to before he was beginning to think she was actually aroused. When he arrived at the chain coffee shop, he became uncomfortably aware that his own trousers were growing tight. With the engine off he could hear an electrical disturbance between her moans. His -albeit incorrect- assumption that the noise he didn’t recognize was the police tapping his line, as Mrs. Woodhull indicated they might, both calmed him down and forced him to keep going, reminding him of what was at stake. Once inside however, he became conscious of the fact that he needed to lower his voice. Fortunately for the ruse, the woman on the other end seemed to like his whispers of affection enough. >> I want to inside of me! << Mary Woodhull cried loudly enough for the wide-eyed tourists in front of him to take pause.

“I - I meant at Starbucks, Soy latté? Cappuccino?” Simcoe swallowed as the smaller of the two men made an obscene gesture with his tongue.

“Thomas just woke up. I’ll see you in a few,” Mary replied.

“ _Thomas_ is with you?” Simcoe gaped, remembering the smiling blonde haired boy whose photograph Mary had shown him when she’d convinced herself that her life was under threat. He wondered in horror, shame, and disgust how much the formerly sleeping child had heard of their impromptu audio drama. Mary was no longer available to answer any of his pressing questions, having hung up as soon as she took notice of the boy in the backseat.

The platinum blonde in front of him, whom Simcoe guessed owed his hair to a bottle of bleach, said something else in French which everyone within earshot understood without translation while the cheeky redhead beside him laughed. Simcoe wondered if they were tourists or businessmen. From the cut and fabric of the tailored suits they were wearing he leaned towards the latter. His fellow ginger surprised him by ordering coffee and breakfast in perfect, unaccented English. It crossed Simcoe’s mind briefly that he had seen him somewhere before.

“Hamilton,” the man replied when asked to give his name. “Alexander Hamilton.”

The barista rolled her eyes as she sloppily wrote something on a paper cup. “Just you wait,” she replied pointing to the end of the bar where another young woman was fidgeting with a milk-steamer. She then turned to Simcoe who was pretending to study the menu as he tried to place the man. He asked if they had tea. After rattling off a list so long that by its end Simcoe was both certain that he hated this place every bit as the girl behind the counter seemed to and that such had likely been her intent, he asked again if she could make him a black tea. No milk. No sugar.

“English Breakfast or Earl Grey?” she asked, adding that milk and sugar were at the end of the counter. He ordered a skinny soy vanilla latté and a skim-milk cappuccino for Mary – not knowing which mom-sounding drink she might have a preference for, bought the least disgusting looking vegan fair-trade holier-than-thou juice box for her son and ordered breakfast sandwiches for the three of them. Once he had his order, he walked over to a group of teenagers sitting on what looked to be the most comfortable chairs which the café had to offer. They moved quickly when he politely asked them to, something that would have come as a surprise had he not seen his own reflection in the glass and known himself to look like a man who may or may not have murdered someone hours earlier. He rung his secretary to tell him to have a fresh suit ready for him back at the office along with a toothbrush, mouthwash and a disposable razor.

He had tied his hair back, watching his tea as it steeped. After a few minutes had passed he played with the bag until the label broke off, robbing him of his short-lived entertainment. The Francophones had gone outside where the one who had not identified himself as the title figure from the musical which Simcoe’s former friend Andre thought bound to sweep the 2016 Tony Awards lit a cigarette. Simcoe wondered if he offered one of his fags to angry young woman behind the counter if she would let him smoke inside. He guessed that she would but before he was able to test this hypothesis, Mary Woodhull had shown up, clearly flustered. A number of patrons who must have overheard his end of their conversation were giving her strange looks, to which Simcoe responded with a glare of his own.

After they had exchanged an awkward greeting which Simcoe found sounded forced on Mary’s end, she thanked him warmly for the meal, for thinking of Thomas and for imagining that she was the kind of woman who could suffer through soy or skim milk. He apologized for being presumptuous, but she didn’t appear to have heard him, her eyes fixed instead on the two men who had just walked back inside.

“Do you know who that is?” she asked in a whisper, leaning in as she cut Thomas’s egg white spinach omelet on ciabatta for him.

“Alexander Hamilton?” Simcoe replied unimpressed.

Mary nodded, paused, and then shook her head. “That name really means nothing to you?”

“What? Is he actually in the cast?”

“John … he is the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Manhattan field office and,” her whisper turned into a hiss, “he keeps looking at us. What the hell did you do?”

Simcoe blinked, looked over at the man with the most unfortunate name in New York City and back to Mary.

“He was standing in front of me while I was waiting in line, talking you though um … I have reason to believe the plan is working,” he whispered back, expecting his words to console Mary as she so required. He saw Thomas smiling at him and he smiled back. Mary opened an educational app on her smartphone and handed it to her son to play with.

“Why couldn’t you have just gone home?” she asked turning her attention back to Simcoe, upset enough to raise his concern. Sometime between Mary’s confessing that Abe had gone off to Oyster Bay the night before without so much as word and her repetitive insistence that she loved her husband whilst she curled up on the couch beside him for the sake of appearance, the FBI field office director and his foreign college had lost interest in them and gone back to discussing business – this time, thankfully, in English. From what Simcoe thought he understood, the NYPD had appointed someone to the case at federal recommendation whose name attracted enough media attention that the facts investigation itself would fail to excite the public on the same level.

“What happened last night?” Mary cooed in his ear.

Simcoe flinched when he felt her fingers drag themselves across his shoulder. “Here?” he clarified, wondering is all American women were insane on some level.

“With the police,” Mary replied in disgust that was easily head through her faux seductive tone.

“I was looking for something I had hastily discarded when a patrol officer named Bradford saw me by the side of the road parked with my headlights on. He asked me what I was doing, I told him taking a piss and he proceeded to ask me a few questions with regard my whereabouts and asked if I had witnessed anything suspicious. I confessed I was with my lover and no questions were raised about the nature of our liaison. I provided your name largely because Woodhull carries a great deal of weight in the area and he immediately dropped the inquiry, which was rather fortunate as I couldn’t have him searching my car,” he purred back.

“What were you looking for exactly?” she teased, tapping her finger playfully on the end of his nose.

“A mobile that we took along with lost and found box we packed the goods we meant to steal into. After I dropped you off it wouldn’t stop ringing. I threw it out of the window in aggravation and drove another 50 meters or so before thinking that said phone may have belonged to the friend we briefly met last night. I turned round to search for it, least the police find the device with my fingerprints on it when I was forced to call off my search.”

“And did you by chance resume it?” Mary smiled.

“To no avail,” Simcoe smiled back.

Mary inhaled slowly and deeply, giving him a look he couldn’t entirely read. Behind him he could hear the two intelligence officers rise suddenly, causing him to briefly concern himself with the possibility that their conversation hadn’t been carried out as quietly and deceptively as they had both seeming allowed themselves to imagine. He felt he lips press against his own as he watched the Assistant Director in Charge and his foreign associate walk past them at a hurried pace.

“It has to look real,” Mary said breathlessly, smiling at her small act of duplicity as she turned around to make sure that the cops were in fact leaving. When she looked back at him she was practically beaming.

Simcoe stared at her, unblinking, unsure of how else to respond.

 

* * *

 

Hewlett brushed his teeth with the bathroom door open, watching his beautiful finance dress out of the corner of his eye. She clothed herself in such a deliberately slow manner that Hewlett wondered if she meant it as punishment for looking. He half waited for her to vanish back into the hell he though himself to be in, much in the same manner that the mythological Eurydice did when Orpheus had turned to behold her. Anna smiled when she noticed that she had caught his eye. He returned the gesture on instinct before turning back to view himself once in the mirror, his hair still intentionally untied the way Anna had indicated she preferred. It seemed to him all at once that everything was Anna, and Anna was everything. God, Hewlett decided, certainly had quite a sense of humor.

After walking out to her car to find her hair dryer –wondering why she had elected to park so far from the house – Hewlett went to see if there was any coffee left over. If the argument between father and son which he could hear from the foyer lead him to believe that he would be able to obtain his beloved’s breakfast beverage of choice without confrontation, he was about to be disappointed.

Richard Woodhull ceased the verbal crucifixion of his only living child upon seeing his tenant, but refrained from addressing Hewlett until he had finished pouring a cup of coffee while attempting to be polite to both Woodhulls present; his >>Pleasant morning to you both!<< going unanswered. He was halfway out the door when the judge gruffly informed him that neither the coffee, nor the mug were his to take.

“My apologies, Richard. I never knew you to take issue with my occasional enjoyment of your coffee before.”

“I hadn’t prior reason to find your thievery particularly offensive.”

“My thievery, sir?” Hewlett rubbed his brow, wondering if this was an opportune moment to mention the drugs he’d noticed periodically went missing from his medicine cabinet.

“Edmund,” the judge cleared his throat, “Court resumes next week. When I return from Albany, I fully expect you to have that woman out of my house.”

“You made no protest when I added her name to the lease,” Hewlett replied patiently.

“I was not aware at the time that Anna Strong and Anna Smith were one in the same person.”

“Anna is here?” Abe asked, adding after taking a gulp of coffee, “With _you_?”

“As it so happens,” Hewlett grinned at him. Turning his attention back to Richard, he said, “By the time you return from Albany, Anna Strong nee Smith may well be Anna Hewlett, should a rose in fact smell sweeter by another name. She is to be my wife.”

He could feel Abe seething next to him, seeing his periphery that the eternal teenager beside him was no longer casually leaning against the counter top. He kept his eyes fixed on the judge who seemed keen to persevere in his hatred of the award winning journalist who ruined his reputation by proxy.

“I’m a United States Federal Judge, Mr. Hewlett. Do you honestly think me incapable of seeing through your fraud?”

Hewlett felt his heart pounding, he felt short of breath, he felt like he ought to speak but his tongue froze on the words they longed to say to someone else. Outside he heard sirens. “I’m in love with her,” he chocked after they stopped. Both Woodhulls glared at him as he took a seat vis-à-vis from Richard, trying to regulate his breathing without much success. “I’m in love with her,” he repeated more forcefully. The doorbell rang. Richard looked at Hewlett in the same manner he looked at his own wayward son when he saw his influence waning, grunting in disgust as he rose.

Aberdeen rushed into the kitchen with wide eyes, “Sir, it is the police, sir.”

This caused Richard to smile menacingly. Both Abe and Hewlett followed him to the door to meet the three men waiting on the front porch.

“I apologize for disturbing you at this hour Justice Woodhull, my name is Benjamin Tallmadge,” said the man holding up his badge for the judge’s inspection, a conventionally attractive uniformed blonde. “I am an Inspector with the NYPD. This is ADIC Alexander Hamilton of the FBI and Agent Lafayette of France’s DGSE. We have a few questions for one of your tenants.”

Hewlett felt his heart pounding, he felt short of breath. “I’m in love with her,” he told the international secret service agents, all of whom he was immediately certain had designs on his arrest and deportation.

Time would prove him right in all counts.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I had in me this week given the terrible political situation I spent the better part of the weekend watching unfold, but I hope it is better than nothing with all the bad romance I threw at you. Comments and kudos are always appreciated, never necessary. Do me a favor though and give someone who needs it a smile or a hug or a kind word this week.  
> As for me, you know I love you. Hopefully I will have more mental energy next week to spend on the special task force, the man who thinks he’s evaded them, the man who just may have succeeded to that end, and the one who, well … you’ll just have to wait and see. 
> 
> XOXO –Tav 
> 
> Up Next: Watching the Detectives


	10. The Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna faces an informal interrogation, Aberdeen helps Hewlett spy on a Frenchman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big warning this go around, lovely faces:  
> Once again, I broke the Cardinal Rule of the TURN fandom. Namely, I chose to portray Edmund Hewlett in the context of his interpersonal dealings as possessing some truly negative attributes. I wish I could point the more militant among you to a certain section you could skip altogether, but there are a few recurring themes and the point of view that paints him in the lowest light happens to also be the most important to this chapter (and thus to the overall progression of the story.)  
> Don’t worry though! Opinions change, people grow, and the far off ending of “Hide and Seek” will ultimately be a happy one, but if you feel possessed to leave me hate here or on Tumblr, please be sure to include language like “u are a disgusting human being”, “how dare you do that to my bb???” and any kind of statement attacking an aspect of my person that plays no role whatsoever in my writing. It is always amusing. I urge you to be creative, and have fun. :)
> 
> That said, this chapter as a whole is pretty heavy. Additional warnings include but are not limited to: institutionalized racism, natural disaster, kleptomania, corporate buyouts, body image, self-scrutiny, petty jealousies, wealth inequality, ill-attuned parenting, hentai, harsh language, unrequited affection, global espionage and an openly confessed love. 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy!

Martin DeJong awoke early at his Florida residence for a morning tee off at the country club of which he hoped to soon become a member. He had recently sold his home in Setauket and upon receiving an offer on Monday for the property which housed his remaining holding, he was satisfied with the prospects retired life could offer. He finally had time to work on his swing, watch daytime reruns of sitcoms from his youth, and otherwise do the sorts of things he had always imagined doing with his wife. Before playing golf with the men he hoped to impress with his latest (and last) business dealing, he planned to read the newspaper while his missus did the crossword, discussing interesting things between bits of dry toast such as which of their old friends had recently been diagnosed with cancer, how long someone else had been widowed, and whose grandchildren they were most certainly glad were not their own.

After taking a quick shower –for he had yet to see a Naples water bill- Martin strode into the kitchen with a smile wearing the shirt his wife had purchased for him at a yard sale the weekend prior, only to be met with a look of grief. Phone in hand, she nodded as the person on the other end of the line spoke, seeming to have forgotten that whomever she was conversing with had no way of discerning her non-verbal. His first thought was that something had happened to one of his children; the reality was far graver.

“It is Applebee’s,” his missus informed him, handing over the handset, “they want to renegotiate.”

Martin quickly grabbed phone from his wife and listened to the man with whom he had had very pleasant and productive dealings not two days prior tell him that the parent company was now only willing to pay a third of his reduced asking price. He told the man he was being ridiculous and hung up the phone, expecting that he, or someone he worked for, would ring back in a few minutes with a more realistic offer.

The call would never come.

Mr. DeJong was not yet aware of this when he sat down with a smug grin, reassuring his wife that this was all part of the sale process. He opened the newspaper to find that Senator Arnold, a politician he rather enjoyed watching when he appeared on Meet the Press because he spoke loudly enough that both he and his wife could understand him without having to turn up to volume on their television to the point where the neighbors started banging on the walls- causing his wife to worry about her shelves and the little glass figurines she had displayed- had gone missing. Unfortunate. He flipped to the sports section to see what was happening in the more accessible world of basketball.

Before he had finished breakfast the phone rang as he had expected it to.

It wasn’t Applebee’s.

It never would be.

A man named Alexander Hamilton informed him as to why.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t that the humidity in the room, nor were her thighs still damp from the shower; Anna Strong’s skinny jeans were simply keen to remind her on this of all mornings that she had long since forgotten about general upkeep of her figure. She pulled them on slowly, painstakingly, her idea of her own worth diminishing in the process. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t simply bloated as she had long excused herself as being were it not for the various sets of eyes that had been fixating on her since her arrival. No, the working class life she led by choice had forged a figure that was now hers to bear. She had been able to accept and otherwise ignore the weight she had steadily been gaining since law school had ended around the same time as her first marriage. The breasts and the butt had increased her tips and the muscle she packed on from the physical nature of her profession made the labor easier as time went on. She liked her body, or had, that is, until she noticed the way that Mary Grant, now Mary Woodhull stared at her in the hallway the day before.

Anna looked down at the small mound at her midsection that was causing her such dissatisfaction. Mary Grant, now Mary Woodhull, a girl she hadn’t seen since she had worn a size two, had seen her small belly and assumed she was pregnant. Mary Grant, now Mary Woodhull, had herself actually gone through a pregnancy, born a child, and was still a double zero. As humiliating as the brief interaction had been, Anna would have been able to keep it from her mind, despite the nagging of the stretch fabric, if Edmund wasn’t watching her in her moment of struggle.

She smiled at him. He smiled back, awkwardly, as if it surprised him that the eyes he had failed to avert had been noticed. Anna held her breath and with it the bump disappeared back inside of her. She was suddenly aware that she had been holding her breath since the first time he had spoken to her, literally, figuratively. He spent a moment gazing dreamily at his own beautiful face in the mirror after he finished brushing his teeth. Anna wondered what exactly she was waiting for as she picked out a clean shirt; fitted, as they all were, further accentuating her double D’s. She pulled it over her head and frowned. Edmund claimed he wasn’t fit for intercourse due to some of the drugs he was on and had very little sex drive due to others. >>Thankfully! << he had had the nerve to say. She wasn’t attractive to him, she realized, and never truly would be. His light-hearted exclamation had stung as much as Mary’s presumptive look, as much as Edmund’s own consistently judgmental one; which was to say, about half as much as his words had the night before.

“I think I am getting fat,” Anna addressed him as he approached her with a wide grin, pushing her stomach out to its limits.

“I think you have a vivid imagination and an impressive lung capacity,” he replied, almost laughing, as he leaned in for a kiss.

She pulled back.

“Ah, alright, you were being serious,” he thought aloud. Clearing his throat her continued, “Anna, I find you gorgeous, I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

“Mary thinks I am pregnant.”

“Mary Woodhull?” he clarified, his face twisting in confusion.

Anna lifted her chin slightly in affirmation.

“I am sure that is not true, and if it is it has nothing to do with you, ah, physically, but rather with the swift nature of our courtship.”

She glanced at her reflection again in the full length mirror. It had been her first time seeing herself in one since she moved out for her mother’s spare bedroom, scarcely a month after moving in. She remembered the caution her mother had given her when she had first mentioned Edmund’s presence in her life. >>Focus on yourself for once << she practically spat, not leaving room for further discussion. Anna rolled the large eyes she had inherited from the woman who to her mind was an embodiment of the very advice she offered.

In the end Anna had taken it. She ran a credit check on Edmund after speaking with Mr. DeJong about the purchase she had long been hoping to make.

Getting to know Edmund had been the next step. True to form, Anna tripped and fell.

She saw him beside her in the mirror, gazing at her cautiously as he took short, nervous breaths, unsure of how to proceed. Anna wondered if she had ruined everything by asking him to help her apply for a line of credit, or by telling him that she loved him – a sentiment he seemed to want to return but didn’t, and perhaps never would. She closed her eyes, imagining his arms around her out of desire rather than a misdirected sense of obligation. She opened them when he spoke.

“I ought to … um, begin my search for your hair dryer and coffee then.”

“Do you think you’ll ever want kids?” she responded.

“I- well, that is, like quite a lot of things in life, I fear I have never given that question much consideration, as the answer lies only in the theoretical. I’m not certain where this conversation is going, darling, but I fear much of last night make have been an error on both of our parts.”

Anna smiled weakly and nodded, “Coffee, yeah. Coffee is good.”

Edmund turned to leave, took a step and backtracked. “Hey,” he said softly, “I only meant … what I meant to say that is - I wish I could divorce my feelings for you from our business arrangement. I believe in your dreams and believe that I will do everything within my power to make them obtainable, as you are well doing for me, but given the nature of our joint predicament … Tell me, do you think we would ever have come together without necessity acting as a catalyst?”

Anna tried to respond but choked on the words that wouldn’t form.

“I don’t know either,” he offered, “but having had the pleasure of getting to know you, I would rather like to imagine that we somehow would have.”

 

* * *

 

She looked around the room after he had gone at all of his fine possessions. Edmund’s half of the closet contained nothing but labels, whereas the majority of Anna’s own clothing had been bought on sale at department stores and chain boutiques with a slightly younger target cliental. She found a sweatshirt from Columbia, a commemorative T-shirt from a SUPA funded workshop with a few signatures on it (which she supposed he never wore) and an assortment soccer jerseys from an English team she would never be able to force herself into supporting. Everything else Edmund owned stank of the riches he claimed not to have. Anna didn’t believe him for an instant. Her bridegroom was either entirely insensitive when it came to wealth or he had no idea about how to discuss the topic. She thought about his off-the-cuff remark about having asked Simcoe for >> a small loan of $40,000 <<, a _small loan_ that would have settled the student debt that Anna would be working off until shortly before retirement. She wasn’t asking too much, she concluded, as she looked at framed photos on his desk of his artificially beautiful sisters – both of whom had clearly had work done – posing in polo gear with the horses Edmund had bought himself for his thirtieth. She had ridden in his imported Jaguar, gazed through several of the high-end telescopes she was afraid to touch and wore a gold ring of his she was convinced could be pawned to cover two months’ rent.

This was the man who claimed to believe in her dreams, so long, Anna figured, if he wasn’t being asked to pay for them. He was kind but not generous, afraid –or simply unwilling- to give her more than a portion of his genetically damaged heart. The room seemed smaller without his presence. Anna was beginning to wonder what was taking him so long, imagining Edmund stuck in a conversation with Richard Woodhull about the harm limitation principle and her father’s repeated failures to respect the ethics code. She wondered what their connection was, why Edmund, who could clearly afford to be living among his high-society friends on the Upper East Side chose to live in a crappy one bedroom apartment in a house on the edge of nowhere. Maybe he was being honest about his means, maybe there was something else he was hiding.

She looked through his bookshelf, through his medicine cabinet, both packed full of words she didn’t trust herself to pronounce. Why me? Anna asked herself. And why, for the love of God, why you? She felt the weight of the ring around her neck and the weight of the world on her shoulders as she remembered the soft, wet kisses he had covered her in the night before as they compared with the hesitance and mild disgust she had been met with the morning after. >> Focus on yourself << her mother warned. >> Edward – Edmond? - Whatever. He isn’t worth your fancy. <<

She was probably correct, Anna thought, trying to imagine that the woman who had always put career before family loved her in her own way - the way she was also forced to with her friends, former lovers, regular customers, and now, with Edmund.

Edmund who said he didn’t want to hurt her and meant he didn’t want to meet her half way.

Anna ran her fingers through her long, dark and no longer damp hair; feeling them snag on the frizzy curls a good blow out would have eliminated. She closed the medicine cabinet to look at herself in the small mirror and pouted once more. Deciding that her husband-to-be had lost interest in preforming the simple act of retrieval she’d asked of him, she slipped a hair tie from her wrist and knotted it behind her ears. She went back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed as she put on her trainers to walk down to the car herself when her phone rang.

It was Mr. DeJong.

Anna verified the time on her watch before answering. No, she wasn’t late, a day drunk hadn’t called the number posted on the door to complain that he didn’t already have a beer in hand the way they tended to when one of her employees was a minute or two late in unlocking the door.

“Hello?” she said, having to repeat herself over the odd sound of sirens ringing through Setauket.

By the time Edmund came back upstairs, awkwardly clutching her hair dryer and a mug of lukewarm black coffee, flanked by Richard, Abe, Cicero’s French tutor (whose presence baffled and name escaped her), two men she didn’t recognize and one she most certainly did, Anna was in tears. She met Edmund’s wide eyes as she shook her head.

“I have to go,” she told her now former boss over the bad connection, “they are hear. Yeah, yeah, I’ll pass that along.”

Edmund whispered her name as he went to embrace her, holding her tightly as she sobbed into his soft cashmere. “Darling, what’s happened?”

Instead of answering him she pulled away. She gave the young inspector a cold look and asked, “How dare you barge in like this?” Lowering her voice to a hiss, she added, “I can have the DA on the phone in seconds.”

The redhead standing directly beside him whispered something in his ear. Tallmadge nodded.

“Miss Strong, my name is Benjamin Tallmadge,” he responded politely, showing his badge, “my associates and I have a few questions we’d like to ask you with regards to one of the customers you may have served last night.” Addressing the others he asked, “May we have the room?”

“No,” Anna answered. “Inspector, I am happy to do my civic duty and comply with your inquiry, but I insist upon my right to legal presence.” She met the judge’s cold eyes and pleaded with them not to leave her alone with a man whose name carried the stain of the woman who had been raped and murdered while in his custody.

“Dad -” Abe started.

Richard Woodhull exhaled slowly, “If it is all the same to you Inspector, the last thing I need this morning is to incur the wrath of my old friend Nancy Smith.”

Tallmadge nodded.

“Thank you,” Anna said under her breath.

“Mademoiselle, Messieurs?” one of the other officers addressed the remaining parties. The girl who Abigail paid $10 to help her son conjugate irregular verbs each week left with a shrug, Abe slipped away after echoing Anna’s thanks to his father. Edmund stood before her, confused and hurt as he had been when he entered the room. “Darling, what is the meaning of this?”

Anna shook her head, fighting back tears. She stoked his cheeks, noting for the first time their slight asymmetry as she pulled him in for a parting kiss. Edmund’s pulse quickened when their lips met, more still when their landlord cleared his throat in warning. “Forgive me,” she pleaded. Her finance blinked.

“You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into with that one, do you?” Richard asked as he ushered Edmund out. Turning back to Anna and the task force, he grunted. “Let’s make this quick, I have a case to review and an opinion to finish writing.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re really a Lord?” Abe asked Hewlett in the hallway, harking back to the short series of questions the ADIC had asked him upon his arrival. He seemed to have been waiting for him, casually leaning against the green papered walls with a cynical expression. He wore the same shirt advertising a band Hewlett had never heard of that he had been in since Monday, which now stank of the night before. Abe’s hair was covered by an old grey beanie he removed only on occasion, which had long lead Hewlett to assume that the younger man was experiencing early balding. Attitude aside, it was sometimes impossible to recognize that the derelict before him was in fact the son of a chief justice.

“My father’s brother is a hereditary peer. Prior to the birth of the little prince I was second in line to inherit the title that allows him that position, but due to recent reforms – why are you asking me this?”

“Is that why you came here, to America I mean? To write your PhD?” Abe seemed to mock. Hewlett rubbed his temples. His landlord’s son wasn’t entirely correct in his assumption, but he was close enough to touch a nerve.

“Certainly perceptive, though I would argue at the moment your talents might be put to better use,” he whispered in reply, pointing at the door that lead to his bathroom. He had to know what was going on. All evidence seemed to indicate Anna, frustrated by one or many of dissatisfying aspects of the life he offered, had acted rung the authorities on him. His own fear had passed and his primary concern was that she would stick to her convictions and come up with a way of condemning him without damning herself in the process – paint herself as a victim, say she had somehow been forced into playing his bride. He had to get into the bathroom to ease drop. Smiling, the younger Mr. Woodhull adjusted his position as to block the door. Hewlett considered that Abe was in on whatever Anna was planning. The memory of his beloved’s description of her lost virginity returned with a sting of betrayal.

“If you’re telling me to shut up,” Abe said, “you won’t hear much from up here. Follow me.”

The college drop-out led Hewlett to the dark basement below his own flat and pointed to an open pipe in a back corner, “If you stand close enough to it you can hear everything that goes on up there.”

“E-everything? Ah, Abraham, I have to ask-”

“About the hentai? We are all – collectively- aware. Why do you think Culper Ring stated practicing in Rob’s dad’s house?”

If lives weren’t otherwise at stake the insinuation would have filled him with embarrassment as opposed to simply giving him pause.

“Ah, I meant, about last night?”

“I wasn’t here last night. You didn’t hear Mary this morning? Shit, I thought she’d woken the whole town proper,” he sighed, “I’ll probably have to give a statement too, I think I saw him there with your mate. Didn’t say anything though.”

“Who?” Hewlett inquired.

“What do you mean who?”

“Must you always be so cryptic?”

“Are you really that daft?” Abe shook his head in disgust, “Benedict Arnold?” Seeing no signs of recognition, Abe took the Lord’s name in vain and asked a series of vaguely insulting rhetorical questions before Hewlett signaled for his silence.

Through the old pipe the pair could hear the Judge explaining to Anna that his presence was merely for procedure; even if he wished to do so he would be unable to provide her with legal representation given his office.

Hewlett looked at Abe in confusion. Pre-Law had been one of the Abe’s constantly altering majors before he’d dropped out, had it not?

“She knows all of this, her mom and my dad used to work together before the bot got their current appointments. That’s what fucked us both up so hard.”

“How dare you speak of Anna in such language,” Hewlett replied, taken aback, “She is one of the most capable, intelligent women I have ever met and is most certainly not -as you suggest - _fucked up_.”

“Yeah, I guess you would see it that way, but then, you don’t really get out much do you? Afraid to mix with the proletariat? That why you picked Anna for your little Green Card Scheme, fallen princess that she plays at?”

“Are you that jealous?”

“Me? No. You are _not_ going to marry her, mark my words there.”

“I’m in love with her,” he stated plainly for the first time, his initial panic having passed.

“Then I’d say you’re even more of a fool than I thought, if I believed you. Knock it off with this honor shit. It is clear to everyone that you’re only interested in my ex because you’ve failed at everything else you’ve ever attempted, and she is only interested in you because –like my father- she sees the clothes you wear as an indication that you have money rather than that you blew your inheritance on luxuries, hoping to disguise the fact that you are an absolute buffoon who struggles to participate in the most basic of conversations. How long do you honestly think it will last?”

It was a rich criticism given its source, but Abe once again had proven himself surprisingly perceptive. The only part of his critique which Hewlett could rightfully take umbrage at was the not entirely incorrect assessment that Anna was after the very assets he’d squandered - if only for the fact that he believed her enough when she told him she was falling in love with him.

“You’ve gone too far,” he hissed back, “Truth be told, Abraham, I’ve never much cared for you either. You are free to carry whatever opinion of me you wish but if you continue to insinuate that dear Anna shares your weak character or base nature-”

“You’ll what exactly?” Abe scoffed.

“Don’t try me,” Hewlett cautioned, placing his index finger over his lips before using it to point back to the pipe.

 

* * *

 

“My boss, Martin DeJong, called me to inform me about the search warrant a few minutes before you arrived,” Anna clarified for the three men sitting before her.

“The conversation I am more curious about, Ms. Strong, is the one you had with, your fiancé I believe shortly before he left the room – what did you mean by ‘forgive me’?”

Anna looked at Richard who did nothing more than return her stare. “Last night Edmund and I were in an argument.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“How is this relevant?” Woodhull asked. “I can personally vouch to the fact that the couple spent the duration of the night here at Whitehall. Explain to me, Inspector, what pertinence their private domestic life has to your investigation?”

Tallmadge chose to drop the line of questioning. “Who was working last night?” he continued.

“Caleb Brewster.”

“Would you be able to put us in touch with him?”

“Absolutely, I have his number stored in my phone if you’ll let me get it for you.”

“Please.”

Anna pulled up the contact and handed her phone to the man whose trousers appeared to be at least as tight as hers felt. His expression of gratitude was muted by a question from the FBI representative – someone whose title seemed far too esteemed for him to be sitting on the small couch of her rented room. Until this point, the Assistant Director in Charge had been reviewing something on his tablet in silence.

“Ms. Strong, a few months ago you tweeted the following to the Pennsylvania Senator: _Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. #domesticdrones #wtf_ ”

“It is a quote from Benjamin Franklin, and a lot of people were using that hashtag after the filibuster,” Anna replied.

“You used the original version at that,” Hamilton remarked, slightly impressed.

“Fit into 140 characters.”

“Do you follow politics closely, Ms. Strong?” Hamilton continued.

“Enough.”

“And yet you claim that you first heard of the senator’s disappearance this morning, moments before my esteemed colleagues and I arrived.”

“I didn’t watch the news last night,” she answered honestly.

Monsieur Lafayette’s device buzzed. It was larger, plainer than most phones, something that recalled the early days of mobile technology. It was more likely more powerful than her husband’s computer and nearly impossible to hack. She had seen one like it before when a friend of her parent’s had been doing some contractual work for the FBI. The DGSE operative excused himself from the informal inquiry.

“Monsieur Cohen!” he addressed the Director of the Mossad as he stepped out into the hallway, thanking him for his quick response and apologizing for the hour several times before realizing that the building he was in suffered from poor reception.

In the basement Hewlett turned to Abe and told him to continue to monitor the interview whilst he left to uncover what had taken the foreign agent’s interest away from the manager of bar where Senator Arnold was last heard from.

 

* * *

 

Aberdeen had first met Mary Woodhull in the summer of 2010 after an earthquake had destroyed her city the pervious January. Mary had been a college student volunteering in Port-au-Prince for the relief organization which now employed her. She’d captivated the then teenage girl who had recently lost her home with stories about her seemingly glamourous life in New York City in the broken French she’d learned in high-school. Aberdeen fell deeply, dangerously in love with the opulent locations omnipresent in Mary’s tales about her crazy roommate, the girls on her cheer squad, the boys she’d fancied and the university she attended. Against a backdrop of devastation, the dream of New York seemed the only reality. When Mary and the other children of privilege who had paid to spend their summer holidays building schools and handing out water bottles returned to the United States feeling quite good about themselves - as Aberdeen later realized white people were want to do – she left without an assortment of women’s glossies and an old English – French Langenscheidt. Aberdeen would never know if Mary discovered they were missing from her luggage, or if she knew who was to blame.

After finishing secondary school –ironically, thanks to the aid the island received after the disaster – Aberdeen applied to a for-profit New York based Au Pair agency, hoping to find work placement in Manhattan, assured by a recruiter that the city was filled with young, working parents hoping to raise their children in a bilingual environment. Two weeks later she found herself standing wide-eyed in line to be frisked by a TSA agent at JFK, a family called Woodhull awaiting her at the other side of the terminal.

She was surprised and delighted to meet Mary again, discovering upon arrival just how small a city of eight million people could truly seem. Mary’s crazy roommate had been replaced by a lazy husband, the cheer squad by a book club, the boys with a baby and the university with a high earning job, but the still-young woman remained unchanged and the city itself was everything she had unintentionally advertised it to be. Aberdeen earned enough through the organization and the money the Woodhulls paid her on the side to go out once a week, but Mary’s husband had cute friends who often stopped by. As so, more often than not, she elected to stay in on her nights off. By the time the family moved out of Queens Aberdeen had enough saved up from all of the evenings productively spent watching Robert Townsend play video games with her boss that she could enroll part time in community college. Furthering her education hadn’t been part of her original plan, but she needed an excuse to go back into the city after falling real-estate prices had forced her exodus. Abe had persuaded Mary to buy a house in his hometown - a few miles and an eternity away. When it turned out the house could not be lived in, the family had been forced to move in with his father.

It happened that Aberdeen was one of young Thomas’s favorite people, and thus she quickly became one of the only two individuals the right honorable Judge Richard Woodhull could tolerate. The other, unfortunately, was a tenant of his whom Aberdeen strongly suspected of racism and imperialist sentiment. He would order her around as if he was paying for her services, as if her job description included half of the ridiculous requests he had. Once he made the mistake of asking her to get a pair of gloves from his room, becoming aggravated when she said that she didn’t know where he kept them. After he’d made a small quip at her expense, she went to look for them, not because she wanted to gift the grad student with any sense of satisfaction, but because she was new in Setauket and could think of nothing better to do. She found what he was asking for, among a scattering of other items that filled her with fancy. Aberdeen pocketed a piece of jewelry and pawned it the first chance she had. From that day forward she was keen to make tea or run errands or do laundry for _l’homme-grenouille_ as she’d dubbed him. He had become a paying customer, after all.

When Aberdeen turned twenty-one she took herself to the only bar in Setauket and was surprised to see that the bartender was a fellow woman of color, rare in the otherwise white-washed town. It happened that on the night in question the bartender –who it turned out had a nine-to-five in a more glamorous location- was hot over a fight she had had been in about a casually racist Tweet a white girl she said was her sister had posted for her roughly two million followers. The two traded stories about social injustice and formed a fast friendship based on their shared indigence. Aberdeen could finally complain about the man who kept trying to correct her pronunciation of his name while constantly and consistently remarking on hers. (Why, she asked aloud, as she screamed internally each and every time, did the city she shared a name with have to be in Scotland?) Two cocktails later, Abigail hated Hewlett every bit as much as Aberdeen did, and Aberdeen hated the friends of someone named Jordan every bit as much as Abigail did.

From that night forward, when she had off and Abigail was working, she would go into gossip. Over time their bond expanded beyond the endless bullshit of institutionalized prejudice to beauty, family, entertainment and academics. Abigail had wanted to be a writer before she was forced by circumstance to become otherwise successful. As such retained an extensive knowledge of English grammar. Now, once a week, Aberdeen would go over to her town house in the evening and tutor her son Cicero in French. Abigail would in turn review her homework assignments, editing and explaining any errors she found. Afterwards they would eat dinner and talk about the sorts of things they had no other audience for. Empathy was overrated. Abigail hated to say it, but when she complained to her white friends about the concerns she had for her son’s safety in a society beset by police brutality, they seemed to say ‘ _but I’m not like that’_ rather than ‘ _we need to put pressure on our policy makers to make appropriate changes which over time could put an end the systemic problems from which these conflicts arise.’_

Aberdeen herself was still in culture shock about how contradictorily different groups of people were treated in a nation that advertised itself as believing that all men were created equal. Her white people, which was to say, the ones she lived with and their equally well-to-do friends, seemed incapable of seeing the discrepancy at all. A few weeks prior Aberdeen asked herself if she was beginning to blindly accept this particular kind of ignorance when Abby asked her if she had any new stories about her English imperialist. >> No, << she was forced to admit after a moment’s thought >> I think he might actually be mellowing out. Maybe he is seeing someone. <<

She shrugged.

To this Abigail had replied >> Oh my God, that reminds me, have I told you about Annie yet? <<

On the cool but sunny Wednesday morning in March when she opened the door for three members of an international task force, Aberdeen learned that as small as New York City seemed, the social scale of Setauket was downright miniscule. L’homme-grenouille was dating Anna Strong, which didn’t in itself excuse him from being a colonialist, or for freaking out when he found her in Richard’s study, reading the magazine she had taken from his room out of habit. He had most certainly not mellowed out.

But he said please for the first time, which was a start.

 

* * *

 

“Aberdeen, please,” he said after calming down over the issue of _Cosmo_ he had correctly deduced had been swiped from his chamber, “if I may trouble you for your assistance.”

“What you need?” she asked without moving to close the erotic short story about the fashion executive fucking a complete stranger in the privy of a train. Hewlett placed a long finger over his lips and beckoned for her to follow him in silence. Aberdeen guessed he wasn’t asking for a _cuppa_.

She was led into the sitting room adjacent to the foyer where a man was pacing, speaking hurried French. Aberdeen guessed it was the doe-eyed bleach-blonde she had seen earlier, noting the differences in the Parisian and the Caribbean dialects.

“What is he saying?” Hewlett whispered.

Aberdeen listened for a moment, becoming convinced that the conversation was of no business of the man who’d inquired. She gave Hewlett a hard look which rather unexpectedly forced him to mind his manners once more. “Please,” he begged.

“I have school on Friday,” Aberdeen said, for once able to enjoy the upper hand in negotiation. “I want to drive your car.”

“Ah … fine, yes. I believe that is in order,” he conceded, however annoyed.

“Get me a pen.”

Hewlett found one on the table beside an incomplete crossword form the Sunday Times and quietly spirited it over to her. Aberdeen began scribbling on the magazine in shorthand everything she overheard. When the call ended, which according to the clock lasted eighteen minutes but spanned over fifty-six pages, the man whose name –or perhaps codename given the context of the conversation – she had learned to be Lafayette, marched back upstairs into the hallway which connected Hewlett’s apartment with the rest of the house.

Followed by the man who may have unknowingly made her a co-conspirator, Aberdeen tiptoed back to the study and took a legal pad from Richard’s desk on which to translate and transcribe her notes.

“Time may be of the essence,” Hewlett warned. She wondered what he imagined was going on, as nothing that was said had anything to do with him whatsoever. Aberdeen grew aggravated.

“See? Do you see?” she said pointing to marks that would have been illegible to another native francophone, “‘Ee spoke to ‘is boss in Paris. I think, maybe, it was a conference call. Mossad – that is Tel Aviv,” she looked at him for confirmation. Hewlett nodded. “A Director Cohen said that they had no relevant evidence of radical elements – I think ‘ee meant terrorism- to report and then this was agreed upon by the … BND and,” she squinted, struggling with her own handwriting, “also SIS … I think I wrote,”

“Ah, yes that sounds correct,” Hewlett rubbed his temples.

Aberdeen skipped a few pages until she found the beginning of the topic which had caused the poor foreign agent the most distress.

“The dollar is falling due to the missing senator and ‘ee –Lafayette - is to mislead the FBI for as long as possible about French interest, they want to strengthen their hand in an upcoming trade deal, and so long as there is an … appearance of instability on the world stage, it is better for the French worker … whole Europe.” Hewlett looked at her with gaped-mouth confusion and asked her –again in polite language typically reserved for only Mary and Richard – to please continue. Aberdeen flipped through the next few pages of notes. “This is just a list of businesses that would stand to profit by a huge margin if the media behaves irrationally for the next twelve weeks … apparently they together employ 38% of the population. I … I am not certain if it was exclusive to France or if the whole EU was meant.”

“A list? You wrote them all down?”

“You asked me too,” she shrugged.

“Could I trouble you to, um, make at least that bit legible?” he pointed at the scribbles. Aberdeen nodded, imagining herself driving to Robert Townsend’s new restaurant after class on Friday as she wrote. The valet would park the Jaguar XJR and she would drink coffee with him at the bar. When his shift ended she would offer to dive him home and he would be impressed by the fact the she had gotten Hewlett to lend out his luxury ride. Then she would suggest that they went somewhere else instead and he would agree that her idea was a good one. By Friday she would have an idea, of that she was certain.

When she was finished she looked back up at Hewlett who had been standing over her, sweating. She smiled. He returned it. It was disconcerting.

“Thank you, thank you, my dear. I’m truly in your debt.”

“’Eulett?”

“Hewlett,” he corrected for a countless time, and then, “Ah, Edmund is fine really if you would prefer.”

Aberdeen had mentioned once in complete frustration something awful Hewlett had said to Abigail’s boyfriend Jordan who responded that the Scotsman wasn’t mean per se, he had just grown up in a bubble.

Maybe Anna had popped it.

“Edmund … what are you going to do with that list?”

“Show it to someone who will know what to make of it.”

She decided that she didn’t want to inquire further. Aberdeen hadn’t grow up in a bubble and as such knew it was in her better interest to not mess with multiple secret service organizations. Anyway, she had to google places that might be fun to drive to in a sports car that cost more than she would likely earn before turning thirty- even with the items she occasionally pocketed and pawned supplementing her income.

 

* * *

 

Anna ran to find Edmund as soon as the short interview had concluded. Inspector Tallmadge, who had invited her to call him Ben, had proven himself far more of a gentleman than the media had portrayed him to be in the wake of the Sarah Livingston investigation. It had done little to calm her nerves.

Nothing about the conversation she had with the Inspector or his federal and – albeit briefly- international colleagues made any sense. From what she understood, Senator Benedict Arnold, a Republican who had made a name for himself as an honest politician (having been elected by a population who wanted to see the legislative branch of government shut down and then doing his level best to do just that on Capitol Hill) had failed to show up at a scheduled event. He, or someone who had access to his Twitter account, had made multiple public declarations of love to her friend Peggy, who had also failed to show up at the same fundraiser, from an unregistered mobile device whose last use had been triangulated to DeJong Tavern. Monsieur Lafayette indicated that he had reason to believe Arnold’s disappearance was connected to the rise of radical Islam. Even if she took the smartphone as evidence, Anna failed to understand how there could possibly be a connection between a senator who seemed as set on undermining the United States Government as its overseas enemies, Peggy Shippen, and a dive bar in a small town so far removed from the complicated world of politics.

Ben assured her that she was not considered a suspect, apologizing that the bar itself would need to remain closed until further notice to allow CSI to sweep it for evidence. Assistant Director Hamilton had shown her the search warrant and asked her if she was willing to accompany them to the property, they had a few additional questions that would be better asked on site.

Anna complied. Despite the reservations she had developed in recent years towards the police and her hesitation around the man accused and acquitted of one of the most grotesque examples of abuse of position, she was happy to perform her civic duty and assist the investigation however she could. Patriotic duty aside, she had to visit the tavern. She had to say goodbye to the place and to her dream of one day owning it.

Tears pooled in her eyes as she considered what Mr. DeJong had told her over the phone. DeJong Tavern was to be the next location of America’s Neighborhood Bar and Grill. The sale of the property was all but finalized. There was no need to reopen after the police had finished. She had been made redundant. Her letter of reference would depend on how quiet she could keep the police.

The news would have been devastating under any circumstance. All Anna could think about however was her confession to Edmund that she had gone behind his back to make sure he had the required credit rating to be approved for a half million dollar loan to secure the rights to a business that had quite likely already lost its future by that point. Now she was unemployed and he was clearly hurt into thinking that the affection she had shown him was as counterfeit as the signature she had forged.

By the time she found Edmund reading a handwritten letter in the study she was crying. He rose instantly to embrace her. Holding her tightly as she once again wept into his sweater, he asked what happened, curing himself for not rejoining Abe in the basement and promising her protection from harm in whatever form it chose.

Anna explained through sobs that her tears had nothing to do with the missing person or the individuals charged with carrying out the related investigation - who had all been surprisingly cordial to her, as had Judge Woodhull in their presence. After telling him about the corporate takeover, Anna tried to admit that Edmund had been correct in his earlier assertion.

“You were right, I should have never tried to marry my material wants to my romantic inclinations. I should have never forged you name or ask a favor or fallen in love or tried to force you to go along with any of it-”

Her apology was interrupted by an open mouth kiss. It was short lived, as Anna was too stunned to return it.

“When I spoke earlier,” Hewlett state plainly after taking a deep breath, “I made the mistake of assuming that I was the same man I knew myself to be prior to meeting you. It was wrong, and perhaps hypocritical of me to imply that your occupational goals delegitimized the feelings you claim to have … for, for me. Me, of all the more worthy men who would seek your hand. It defies all logic, and yet, I find myself in love with you too, Anna Strong.”

Anna’s heart raced as her breathing became erratic. When she was at last able to catch it, she spoke, too surprised to truly be delighted. “Forgive me I … I never … Edmund you needn’t say those things only because I wish to hear them.”

“I’m not. That much I can promise you. I love you, Anna. We will find a way to make this work, all of it. Immigration, your pub, my degree, our romance. Ah … as it so happens, I may already have something of a plan worked out.” Anna looked up at him, smiling as he continued. “Um, at any rate, I likely ought not to bring this up, but we have to move again as soon as possible. I don’t believe I can trust any of our house mates.”

Anna nodded slowly, “What exactly do you have in mind?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have a ton of notes for you this week, many of which are abbreviations you have seen in weeks prior which I have failed to define. Let’s get to it, shall we?
> 
> SUPA - a pooling of physics research and post-graduate education in eight Scottish universities (including St. Andrews where I mentioned Edmund having attended in Ch. 2)  
> DGSE – Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French external intelligence agency  
> ADIC – Assistant Director in Charge, the individual charged with overseeing a large scale FBI field office  
> FBI – the American Federal Bureau of Investigation  
> Mossad; Yossi Cohen – The Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations; Yossi Cohen, who speaks fluent French, has been its director since 2013  
> TSA - the Transportation Security Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (and to my mind the most secretive of the American three letter agencies, do you have any idea how much research went in to finding out what this department was called?)  
> JFK – an airport in New York  
> BND – the Bundesnachrichtendienst, a German intelligence agency  
> SIS - the Secret Intelligence Service, a UK intelligence agency, also known as MI6
> 
> Did I miss any? Do be so kind as to let me know.  
> Translations and other notes:
> 
> l’homme-grenouille – the frog man  
> harm limitation principle – in the ethics and standards of journalism, harm limitation deals with the question of if everything learned ought to be reported. You’ll find out more about Anna’s father in a few weeks (and mummy dearest tentatively has a bit role in the next chapter!)  
> hereditary peer – part of a really complex legal system historically comprising of hereditary titles, not super relevant for this story, but don’t worry, you’ll find out more about Hewlett’s background too.  
> the issue of Cosmo – it has appeared a few times, hasn’t it? In case you were wondering, no, this isn’t based on a single issue (and certainly not the 3.2016 US Edition. The porn comes from a UK issue, the quiz appeared in the German version. Both articles are accessible online.)
> 
> Oh! That was rather long, wasn’t it? I hope I cleared up any discrepancies or confusion. Thanks as always for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated, never necessary (but hey, if you hated the chapter I already got you started there at the top … it wasn’t that harsh though, now was it?) Anyway, in lieu of what happened in my country of Friday, I am glad I had this story to distract me from panic – really you guys, thanks so much for the hit count on this, knowing that I have people reading something I am putting out is sometimes just the most settling thing, I am not sure how to explain it. You guys rock, I hope you have a beautiful week, and when we next meet we will find out what is going on with John Andre. 
> 
> XOXO - Tav
> 
> Up Next: Committed


	11. The Gamble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tallmadge makes an arrest, Hewlett convinces Simcoe to help him hold the world’s markets hostage, Simcoe struggles with his feelings for Mary, Andre goes to rehab, and Akinbode examines his life only to find that he _really_ detests the sofa in his office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The biggest warning for this chapter is the word count, essentially I’ve given you guys a two week long chapter three weeks late. Before we begin though I want to give a shout out and thanks to  
> [ Tumblr ](http://rapid-apathy.tumblr.com/) and [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rapid_apathy/pseuds/rapid_apathy) user rapid-apathy for surprising me with this gorgeous[ moonboard aesthetic ](http://tavsancuk.tumblr.com/post/148641280515/tavsancuk-rapid-apathy-hide-and-seek-a-turn).
> 
> Alright, let’s do the thing: sexual deviance, light self-harm, harsh language, sport references, street meat, fair trade coffee, OC cameos, bar fights, knife fights, violent kisses, toxic friendships.

At three in the morning, Jordan Akinbode was beginning to regret his decision to sleep on the sofa in his office. The imported leather was soft, but the piece itself was seldom used and the padding was as hard and uncomfortable as the day it had been shipped from the manufacturer. He had been tossing and turning for an hour or so, wondering if _avvocati_ faced similar challenges in finding comfort, or if the lovers of Italian lawyers were more adamant that their partners came home at night. Most nights, Akinbode found himself at his desk long after housekeeping had left and the lights in the hallways had all been shut off. Would things be different when Abigail moved in next month? Expectations aside, he couldn’t imagine how they could be.

His job was stressful but predictable. Nothing of the danger and glamour of the television shows he’d never had the time to watch. He rarely found himself in court, and on the odd occasion that he stood between twelve jurors, his client, a lengthy sentence or a heavy fine, time seemed to warp with his adrenaline. The room blurred as his heart raced, coming into focus only long enough for him to pull a punch. A quick knockout. A moment of public glory which could never be fully enjoyed. He preferred to settle outside of the courtroom, or rather, his firm did, and he was content to comply. Akinbode simply enjoyed battle, the weapons and terrain were of little consequence. Half of corporate law was research and, as such, most of his time was spent reading. The real fight was with his eyes, in keeping them open long past the point of exhaustion, in shutting them when he recognized that he could no longer make sense of the words before him.

He wondered periodically throughout the night when awoken by a jolt of pain from lying on the makeshift bed to which his tall frame was ill-fit if he should get back to work; if he should fire his useless paralegals; if he should craft a letter of complaint to the couch’s designer; if he should just sleep on the floor. He shifted under the weight of the wool coat he was using as blanket, hearing his neck crack in protest as he tried to roll over to his side, his face itching against the blazer he’d folded to function as a pillow. He would have to think ahead next time. Or say no to old friends who wanted to move house in the middle of the work-week. This wasn’t working out.

Akinbode tossed for the next six hours, dozing when he could find a comfortable position, longing for the couch that had once graced his office before it had been renovated when he could not force his eyes to shut. He shifted all night between wanting to get up and make coffee and wanting to go home. Work places tended to have that effect on people, he found. When his phone rang ten minutes before the alarm was set to go off, he was grateful for the interruption form his thoughts and from the lack thereof.

It was going to be a long day. They all were.

“Hey,” he answered. No number appeared on the caller ID, but he figured that anyone ringing him on his cell this early in the morning was doing so in error or for personal reasons. A recording informed him that he was receiving a call from the NYPD. Akinbode closed his eyes after pressing one to accept, waiting for either Simcoe or Rogers to explain how being stopped for a minor traffic violation had turned confrontational enough to warrant detention. The line was silent for ten seconds before Akinbode offered a more professional greeting.

“Ahm, Akinbode?” said an Englishman, in exact accordance with his expectations.

“Speaking.”

Hewlett spent the next 45 seconds introducing himself. Akinbode knew this because he always looked at his watch when the Brit who seemed least at ease with the Queen’s English began to stutter over something that should have been simple to articulate.

“What’s good fam?” he responded, smiling. Hewlett hated, or at least seemed thrown off by colloquialisms, no matter how dated. He imagined the left defender from his Sunday league squad twisting his caricature of a face into an expression of absolute confusion. If Hewlett actually harbored any of the prejudices of which he was so often accused, he had never made the mistake of voicing these in Akinbode’s presence. Still, he sometimes found it mildly amusing to use slang his would-be step son had picked up in prep school - of all places - on someone who was perhaps simply afraid to call him on having personally grown up behind a white-picket-fence; an only child of doting parents in an upper-middle class suburb.

“Ah, yes well, nothing, nothing is _good_ , you see. I’ve rather found myself in something of a predicament.”

Akinbode rose, thanking his bones and muscles with a long stretch for their patience with him the night before.

“Sure,” he replied as he walked to his desk waiting for Hewlett to elaborate. He took the toothbrush, paste, floss, and mouthwash he kept in a Ziploc from his pen drawer, almost on instinct. His parents were both dentists. _Tooth_ had either been his first word or it was a very well-constructed lie. At any rate, dental hygiene had always been rather high on his list of priorities. When he was fourteen he’d had his first and last cavity, having been denied anything but the most basic local anesthetic when his father gave him a filling, a trauma he hoped to never relive. Seeing the otherwise warm and friendly man from the chair, drill in hand, had altered his perception as well as his life goals. For all his flaws, Akinbode never wanted it said that he took pleasure or made profit through prolonged torture.

And so, as an adult, he practiced corporate law, insuring that his clients never had to face the pain of consequence.

He walked to the bathroom to freshen up, wondering if he had deodorant in his gym bag and if he had by some stroke of luck forgotten to take it out of his car, whilst Hewlett sputtered through an apology about the hour of the call.

“I was about to get up anyway. What do you need?”

“I’m, you see, I am being detained. I know it isn’t your specialty but I am in a situation where it would be beneficial to have a solicitor present for questioning and I know you’ve acted-” he mumbled on. Unless he had assaulted and officer, it was unlikely that the police would waste their resources on an interview. He barely knew Hewlett outside of sport, but he couldn’t fathom that Mr. Fair-Play would, under any circumstance, debase himself in the same manner which their other teammates were want to. This likely had to do with immigration. He glanced at his watch, noting that it was not atypical for the INS to make their arrests before sunrise, wondering how long Hewlett had been waiting at the station.

“Questioning? Shit,” he snorted. Hewlett’s visa was still valid for two months or so if he remembered correctly. He could personally get any charges dropped on that fact alone. Still, there was probably a good story in this, and half the soccer team liked him less than usual as of late. Akinbode would waive his fee if his teammate would waive his right to attorney-client privilege. The locker room needed a laugh. “Hewlett, it has been a _day_. Not even! I know folks who’ve been living in our great nation illegally for thirty damn years without once attracting the attention of the authorities, so tell me, how’d you manage?”

“My,” he responded after a long pause.

“What?”

“My great nation, you said ours and I’m not, strictly speaking, even supposed to be here right now.”

Akinbode rolled his eyes, wondering if it was worth it to explain the ideals on which the city upon a hill was founded and how and why the plural possessive, rather than the singular would always be proper in a statement of patriotic sentiment. Then again, he had yet to open his first can of generic energy drink and Hewlett likely hadn’t taken tea or whatever substance it was the helped him out of bed. It wasn’t worth it.

“Look, we can debate the use of a possessive pronoun in a common expression or you can tell me where you’re at and what you did to land there and I will be down when I can. I wouldn’t worry too much. Assuming the worst, the deportation process can take years and you’ll probably have finished your degree before they even give you a deadline for the paperwork you’ll be given sufficient time to submit. Just stick by whatever story you and Anna agreed to -”

“I, I think there has been a misunderstanding. You see I’ve, ah,” Akinbode looked at his watch again, wondering how long the torcher would last this time. Hewlett, meanwhile, had lowered his voice to a whisper.

“I’ve been arrested for murder. In a rather high profile case it would seem.”

It was going to be a long day.

 

* * *

 

Akinbode paced the length of the six-stall gent’s for the eight minutes it took him to brush and floss his teeth to meet his approximation of what nine out of ten dentists might be said to recommend. He was in the process of splashing cold water and hand soap on his face when one of the senior partners walked in, greeting him as he unzipped his fly at the urinal.

“Long night?”

Akinbode was never sure how to respond; an honest assessment of the workload would sound like a complaint, playing down his toils served only to insult his own sense of integrity. He elected instead to give his boss an accurate account of what he was able to accomplish in the fourteen hours he had spent at his desk before calling it a night.

“Impressive,” the aging attorney replied as he moved to wash his hands in the sink next to him. “Care to join me in my office for coffee, you look as if you could use it.”

It wasn’t just an offer or an assessment, it was the invitation Akinbode had been positioning himself since his last promotion.

“Another time?” he suggested, “I’ve to visit 1PP for a deposition.”

“Not one of your little friends, I hope. You seem to be out of the office quite a lot recently on their behalf. Perhaps, Jordan, you might do better to reevaluate your priorities … and your peers.”

“A friend? Not entirely,” Akinbode answered, grateful that his deep voice rarely betrayed the emotion behind his words, “I’m acquainted with someone who is being detained in connection with the Arnold Investigation.”

“The Arnold Investigation?” his boss clarified, the fine lines that cut across his forehead transforming into deep creases as his eyebrows raised in astonishment.

Akinbode had glanced at his news ticker as soon as he had gotten off the phone. He was as lost as the rest of America as to what might have happened to the Pennsylvania senator, but he was in possession of enough of details to defend the wanting of his presence at a deposition.

Benedict Arnold was scheduled to speak at a huge rally being held for his part’s presumptive nominee the night prior. Authorities had reason to believe that foul play was involved and were quick to respond accordingly. The case had been assigned to an overzealous inspector with whom Akinbode was well acquainted. Benjamin Tallmadge, who prior to having his name scandalized had grown up down the street from him, was proving himself a more interesting talking point for pundits and morning media personalities than the acts of the investigation that had thus far been made public.

“I know the arresting officer,” he shrugged, “the suspect is a legal alien with a big mouth and a weaker command of the English language than his nationality might otherwise suggest. I’m all but certain that I can have this sorted and dismissed in no time.”

“The Pakistani?” his boss asked. Akinbode wondered if Simcoe was meant or if he was being gently reminded that the law was, by its very nature, more lenient on some than it was on others.

“No, white guy, lose connections to aristocracy back in Europe,” he replied sharper than intended.

His boss took no notice. He advise him to bill for his time to Wachtell Lipton and to stop by for coffee the following morning. He seemed impressed that Akinbode knew how to exploit his connections. Akinbode wondered if that were so or if he was, as he rather imagined, simply being strangled by the interpersonal ties that too often seemed to tighten like a noose.

 

* * *

 

He found his sport bag in his trunk where he’d hoped it would be. As he shifted around the dirty kit and still damp towel from Sunday in search of the toiletries he knew must be in there somewhere, his phone rang again. This time a woman was sobbing on the line in broken English. Her accent was amplified by her tears to the point that Akinbode found himself struggling to understand a single word.

“Aberdeen? Baby girl, you alright?”

“Monsieur ‘Ewlett was arrested. Anna Strong just called to ask me to get ze car of him.”

“I know, I’m on my way down to police headquarters now?” his voice raised as if he had just asked a question. It was a strange morning indeed. Akinbode wondered if he had, in fact, actually managed to fall asleep on the small sofa his firm had had imported from Milan. If that was why his shoulders still hurt, if that was why it was taking him so long to find the bar of deodorant and the bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier he knew he kept – in the side pocket. Well. That was sorted at least, he though as he sprayed himself with something that had been a gift from one of the interchangeable Shippen girls on their last family visit to New York.

Still, it didn’t explain his shoulders, Hewlett’s arrest, or Aberdeen - who’d maintained that she _absolutely ‘ated ‘im_ since the day he’d made her acquaintance, and likely before that as well - was so torn up over it. He had never been much of a fan of Dr. John Andre, but if he awoke with the dream intact he would have to write it down and ask him about its possible interpretations.

“Sorry, ze signal is shit in Setauket.”

“I know, I know. What’s up though?”

Aberdeen explained that she may be in trouble. Hewlett asked her to translate a telephone conversation they had overheard a French secret service agent having with a few high profile players (though lizard people was the term she’d used.) She had transcribed what she had heard and given Hewlett the names of traded entities which stood to profit the most from the fall of the US Dollar and the subsequent rise of the Euro, Shekel, Lira and Pound over the coming months. She wondered if that was illegal. Akinbode wondered if he could have been given a better weapon. After thanking her for the information, assuring her that she wouldn’t get in trouble (but not to mention it to anyone else until he’d had time to review the charges being brought against his client) he had his dream turn back into a nightmare when she mentioned that she was in the car with her boss, Mr. Woodhull. Someone had to drive her to the car with the stick shift she and few others knew how to operate, or? Sure, Akinbode agreed reluctantly, kicking his back tire both in frustration and in hope that the shot of pain would wake him if a better reality did exist outside the confines of his evidently strange subconscious. No such luck.

“Can you hand the phone over?” he asked cautiously.

Two minutes on the phone with Abe Woodhull told him the following – the man had no business being behind the wheel, he likely hadn’t been listening to his Au Pair’s conversation, and that even if he had by chance overheard the conversation it its entirety, he seemed to be either too inebriated or too want of intellect to use the information in any purposeful way. Akinbode advised him to let Aberdeen drive him home, they could pick up the other vehicle later on. He spoke to his girlfriend’s friend once more, assuring her that he had this all under control. When he hung up he said a short prayer for her safety before driving to face the son of the man who had taught it to him.

 

* * *

 

The interrogation room where Hewlett waited in handcuffs was small and ill-lit.

“So I talked to Aberdeen on my way over,” Akinbode said in lieu of a greeting.

“Great, then you’re already up to speed,” Hewlett said as he tried to reach into his coat pocket. “I need you to give this to Simcoe.”

“Man, I don’t want to go _near_ your blood money. Keep that shit to yourself. You’re going home today, that much I can assure you. Give it Simcoe yourself if you are that set on dragging everyone you know down with you,” he snapped. He could see he’d have his work cut out proving the client’s innocence if the man was set on furthering his criminal activity within the enemy camp. Hewlett looked uncharacteristically disheveled. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was a mess. He’d seen him in this state before after what Abigail insisted had been a suicide attempt, an idea he gave little merit. Akinbode prided himself on being able to scope out weakness. Edmund Hewlett was cold and self-centric, but he wasn’t by any means suicidal; he loved himself too much to play such games.

“I’m not quite sure that is an option. Ah, going home, I mean.”

“You didn’t say anything did you?” Akinbode asked, his heart falling.

“No, I … no, of course not,” he asserted, adding under his breath, “I was certainly told quite a bit.”

“Forgive me were you … roughed up? You look a little-”

“I cut myself shaving and Anna maintains that she likes my hair better this way.”

Akinbode shook his head as he spit into the palm of his hand, using the moisture to rework his client’s dark brown hair back into its usual order against Hewlett’s crises of disgust and protest.

“Listen to me, finance or not, if the NYPD decides to film this interview it could be used by the prosecution at trail. I want you to sit up straight, I can’t have you looking depressed or deranged. No matter what you actually say, should this go to court, jurors’ gut reaction is driven by the visual.” He pinched and patted the cheek that he wasn’t certain if the Scotsman had full feeling in or not. “Now, tell me, what do these bastards possibly have on you of all people?”

 

* * *

 

Seeing that he had a series of unheard and unread messages, Hewlett stayed inside the car when he and Anna arrived at the former DeJong Tavern, in spite of his finance’s gentle pleas. The carpark was flooded with men in blue paper jumpsuits carrying metal cases full of equipment, no doubt to prod their way around her establishment, looking for evidence he doubted they would find. Fights didn’t break out when Caleb was pouring. The mood was always jovial, and the bearded part-time bar tender was more than happy to throw out anyone threatening the festivities– literally, if need be. He, and everyone else he knew -save for perhaps Wakefield, who he couldn’t imagine quarreling with anyone, and Andre, who kept his drunken pity parties at home and work where they belonged- had found himself out on their ass once or twice. The same had probably happened to the senator, if in fact, he had been there at all.

Occasionally, Hewlett reasoned, Abe Woodhull - who claimed to have seen Arnold last night- fancied himself politically minded. When the mood struck him, he spent half the day on the couch arguing openly with the characters on C-SPAN who never seemed to take his suggestions to heart. Had Benedict Arnold truly been among the tavern’s patrons, would Abe somehow not have recognized a prominent politician sitting down the bar from him and being _a prominent politician_ and taken the opportunity to offer his opinions where they could be heard? Hewlett considered for a moment that Abe’s real passion was screaming at the TV midday, and that, quite possibly, if his father had been watching another station the night before, young Abraham would have spent his afternoons yelling at court shows or soap operas instead.

Anna winced as Inspector Tallmadge joined her at the door as if she expected to find a corpse inside. Hewlett snapped a photo when her back was turned, making sure to get as many uniformed officers as he had the possibility to. He had something of a plan. Now to find out who he needed to bribe or beg to actualize it.

The night before, somewhere between Anna’s confession that she had forged his signature to run a credit check and his discovery that her snores, while at first endearing, were rather difficult the sleep through, Hewlett had applied for a number of quick loans online, only to discover that without a full time job and a sufficient percentage of the desired sum in liquid assets, every last one of his applications had been declined. Traditional banks, which typically had stricter lending policies were likely to echo their answer. He’d been unable to sell his car in the nearly three months it had been on the market, and, in the middle of the night, not knowing where else to turn, he’d done what he was almost famous for and implored his mother for financial assistance, offering his horses as collateral.

She had yet to respond.

Luckily, he had a rather large family. Hewlett took a deep breath, wishing that he hadn’t promised Anna that he would quit smoking altogether as he prepared himself for the onslaught.

 _“Edmund, I don’t know where you get off-”_ delete. His older sister Edna was pissed, but that had been her default since his birth, at least in all matters pertaining to _mummy’s favourite_ as he’d been dubbed by everyone who knew the family. Hewlett sighed. There was no repairing this. Next message.

 _“What the actual fuck you think mum’s going to do with a team a’ bloody polo horses? I’ll settle with you though, six thousand for the whole lot. But, with you still paying the stable fees, or does mum pay those too? Anyway, Paris is beautiful this time of year and no, neither Fabienne nor I were injured in the recent attacks. Thanks for not asking. Ever notice how you only bother ringing when you want money? Something to mull over at that pub you’ll never own I guess. Cheers!”_ His little brother had a point, several really, none of them immediately helpful. He’d rung back a few minutes later to ask if Edmund was really getting married, said he wasn’t really angry about the horse thing, although he was fairly sure their parents and sisters were, and that he really should make more of an effort to keep in touch. _“I guess you work for NASA now so well done there,”_ Eugene added before hanging up a second time. Edmund realized he still had yet to tell his family that he had failed to graduate and that his employment options were slim at best.

Someone from HR at the planetarium called, both reminding him of how far he was from where he’d ever expected to be at this stage in his life, and that she needed to see a valid copy of his work visa.

Hewlett sighed once more. Not having received any hate mail from Eleonore, he decided to go ahead with his plan. He sent his younger sister the picture he had taken and dialed her number.

“Edmund!” a familiar voice rang out in surprise. “Why, it has been ages! How long have you been in the colonies now? Two years? Three? I thought you were coming home.”

“Ah, yes, I … good afternoon, Effie. Is my sister around? I rather need to speak with her. I truly wish this wasn’t the aspect of my personality presenting itself as dominant these days, but there is something which … or wait,” he said, remembering that his favourite sister’s best friend and flat mate also had a press card and might know where to start with his request, “Maybe _you_ can help instead?”

“Aw! Ellie’s not even gotten round to proposing and I am already being treated like a member of House Hewlett,” she laughed. “But, seriously, what do you need?”

He explained, as he had briefly to his mum in an email, that his finance managed a bar and wished to purchase the business from the owner who was selling it to finance his retirement. Evidently, he had made a deal with Applebee’s –an American chain restaurant – but there was reason to believe that the deal had fallen through, or might before it is finalized. A US Senator was murdered on the property last night. Could she perhaps find out if whoever made acquisitions at Applebee’s knew this and were they planning to pull their offer? Could she perhaps leak the photo he’d taken to a news agency or two if not?

“Wait, Benedict Arnold?” She repeated the name several times in varying pitches before adding that his name was all over the news in Great Britain, but the media were treating the story as something of a terror attack, saying that the threat came from ISIS, and at this time no one knew if the senator was alive. _And you are saying he was murdered in a dive bar?_ Edmund tried to backtrack, explaining in the vaguest way possible that Britain’s standing in global finance and within the EU if he had understood correctly was partially contingent on the verifiable parts of the story not getting out. Not yet.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll see what I can find out. Stay on the line though, don’t think you’re getting out of talking to your sister. Everyone is furious at you, you know?”

“Everyone? Well then, it would seem, my dear, that things are exactly where we left them.”

Hewlett would never speak to his sister, or find out if Applebee’s had had second thoughts about purchasing the property. Uniform was knocking on his car window, inquiring why he was telling a foreign news agency that Senator Arnold had been murdered in a dive bar before being ordered to step out of the vehicle.

Hewlett was cuffed and brought to headquarters, where after giving his fingerprints, passport and every other form of identification he had at his immediate disposal, he was thrown into a little room and told to wait. When an inspector had come in to ask him a few question, he’d demanded the presence of a solicitor.

 

* * *

 

“So let me get this straight,” Akinbode said, “in the past few hours you find out about an acquisition, use the disappearance of a public official to try and halt the purchase, obtain what is essentially insider trading information from the _Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure_ , which, based on your _give this not-at-all-suspicious-envelope to Simcoe,_ I assume you are planning to try and exploit? You use terminology at a crime scene that you didn’t _actually_ enter explicitly referencing murder – Fuck, Hew, what if they had just found a dead body inside?”

“I wasn’t thinking … on that; the scenario in its entirety seems very unlikely if I am being honest.”

“But you didn’t say anything to the police directly?” 

“Beyond _I’m afraid there has been a misunderstanding_ and _I demand to speak with my solicitor_? No. Not a word.”

“Good man.”

Hewlett asked if Akinbode thought he could build a defense to which he nodded, admitting it wouldn’t be easy. He told him that Tallmadge was - contrary to the media’s portrayal- one of the most upstanding officers he would ever encounter, but not to let that blind him. Ben Tallmadge was, at least in this instance which had Hewlett handcuffed to a chair, the enemy, no matter how decent, generous, or friendly he otherwise seemed.

Hewlett asked a series of questions which lead Akinbode to the realization that he hadn’t been stateside during the Sarah Livingston hearing. He offered the Brit a short version of the tale he rather wished had been forgotten. Sarah Livingston, a young nurse, was being robbed and rang the police. When they showed up thirty minutes later she had killed three men in self-defense with a hand gun that was legally purchased by and registered to her. Sarah was arrested, detained, and found dead in her holding cell a few days later. Tallmadge, who’s DNA had been found on and in her, was eventually acquitted of any wrong doing, but his name carried a stigma. Crime went up after the acquittal because women were afraid to call on the police’s help.

“And I left Anna with him?” Hewlett winced as understanding swept over him, “That was the look she was giving me, that’s why she wanted Richard to stay during her interview. I left her with _him_.”

“Did you not here me? Ben is innocent. Always has been, nothing you can do against spin. Boy is the son of a preacher. Your girl is safe. Anyway, she can’t be that scared. I’m sure she and her mom had multiple conversations about him. Nancy basically owes him her current post after all.”

Hewlett looked slightly more perplexed than usual.

“Jesus Christ have Mercy, I know your relationship is fake but have you never discussed anything real? Or are you truly that daft? Anna’s mother has been the District Attorney since you arrived in this beautiful country of _ours_. After Tallmadge was acquitted her predecessor resigned, and Nancy Smith, who as a state prosecutor gained a reputation for being tough on crime after breaking a Bratva boss on the stand in the late nineties, won the election in a landslide. One of her first acts was promoting Tallmadge to the rank of Inspector, perhaps in thanks. To my mind, it may play into why he was assigned to the Arnold Investigation, but then I’m sure he would have otherwise earned everything on his own merits. Went to Yale, you know.”

“Anna only mentioned that her mum wanted nothing to do with me. And that the two of them don’t exactly see eye to eye,” he paused, changing course. “So John Andre, in all of his brilliance, thought it wise to suggest that I marry the daughter of the DA for a fucking Green Card, while living under the same roof as the state’s Chief Justice, with a family who hates me, who Anna also has a sorted personal history with. It is like I was set up for failure,” he mused quietly.

“Well the _good news_ is you fell so in love with her that you broke your impossible moral code, killed a senator, spied on a French spy, then -high on your victory- tried to commit an act of corporate espionage in earshot of the police? Was the plan all along? Kill someone so prominent that it would scare off the competition, drive down the price, and buy the bar with funds you mean to obtain from insider trading? Doubt Simcoe will go for it, mind.”

“Is that honestly what you think? I literally found out about Anna’s intention to buy DeJong Tavern last night. Everything that happened since was happenstance.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think happened. That is the general idea Tallmadge is going to throw at you, so come,” Akinbode looked at his watch, “I can’t imagine we will have more than a quarter hour, let’s rehearse what you’re going to answer and what you are absolutely not to say.”

 

* * *

 

They rehearsed.

And rehearsed.

And rehearsed.

Two hours passed without a single interruption form New York’s finest. Akinbode was growing impatient, Hewlett agitated.

“You have any change?”

“What?”

“Money coins. I’ll go get us some of the worse coffee you’ve ever suffered. Milk? Sugar?”

Hewlett stood up and instructed his lawyer to reach into his back pocket. “White tea, no sugar, but not if they only have powdered milk. Then black with lemon.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll try to find out from the floor what is taking so long.”

One Police Plaza was buzzing. From the vending machines Akinbode could hear the Nancy Smith screaming at someone in her deep, throaty voice, someone whom he hoped wasn’t Ben but feared might be. That wasn’t good. Ben tended to be more aggressive when he found himself under stress – something he knew both as a defender and as someone who’d played a number of the same sports back in high school. It was useful, having someone on your squad who was always good for a late goal, but facing someone who approached the world with that level or intensity in a professional setting intimidated even him. Akinbode bought Hewlett a cup of tea he hoped met his specifications. He prayed that the stuttering, sniveling Brit could hold it together during the interrogation. Rodgers would have been comparatively easy to get off; hell, he would rather have been tasked with establishing reasonable doubt for Simcoe -whose guilt he would have no question over had the ginger been arrested instead. He kicked the vending machine, causing the steaming hot liquid dripping from the faucet to spray on his leg. He wasn’t dreaming and it was high time that he abandoned that hope. He’d barely slept, his shoulders ached, and this was going to be a long day.

They all were.

Especially when they involved teammates, current and former alike.

“Tallboy!” he cried out when he saw Ben standing over someone’s desk on the way back, clutching a number of thick files he assumed had nothing to do with this client.

“Air Jordan!” Ben greeted him in return. They tried to shake hands but finding it impossible, settled on rubbing elbows awkwardly.

“How is thirty treating you?” Akinbode asked. He had to turn down Tallmadge’s invitation on Monday, having previously made plans with Simcoe, whose birthday fell on the same day. Plans, he thought bitterly, that work had made him cancel like everything else that might have proven remotely pleasant. By his hasty calculations he spent more time hanging out with his chosen peers in police stations than in pubs. Ben’s expression told him he wasn’t alone.

“How do you think?”

“Not well from the looks of it. Coffee or tea?” he offered, holding the cups out. Hewlett would forgive him.

“Which one is coffee?” Ben asked, looking at the two identical beverages. Jordan handed him the one he’d let spill slightly in an effort to snap himself into another level of consciousness.

“I don’t think it matters, that machine makes the weakest beverage I’ve ever had.”

“Ironically the decaf tastes alright, but what is the point?”

“Exactly. I don’t think my client is missing much. Say how much of a wait-”

“Hard to say. The DA is in the process of recusing herself from the case so the whole process is on standby while I wait on an ADA to be appointed and to issue a proper search warrant, which of course no one is outright willing to do given that the suspect rents a room from Richard Woodhull. It is a mess. And the feds are involved, which is always an exercise for the temperament.”

Akinbode studied Tallmadge as he blew on his tea and took a long, slow sip. His pretty, soft features had likely been tied in knots all morning, his slightly too long hair fell in his face without him noticing. Akinbode wondered if this was a Pisces trait, and had half a mind to ask Hewlett when he got back if only to piss the astrophysicist off. He smiled. Tallmadge was done. They had this.

“Why are you pursuing this?”

“We have to take every lead seriously at this point. Furthermore, don’t you find it a little suspicious that your boy moved to this country two years ago, barely has any social contacts, and the one’s that he does have all seem to immune him from the rule of law?”

“That sounds circumstantial at best.”

“If there is a connection between Hewlett and Arnold I mean to find it. Thanks for the coffee, or tea, I better get back. I’ll do my best to have you out of here before lunch.”

“Thanks, this doesn’t count as me taking you out for drinks by the way. How was your party?”

“There was none,” Ben paused to lament.

“Ah, dude.”

“No it’s, it was probably for the better. The calm before the storm, you know? I ended up just having a few beers with my dad. We’ll get some after this is all behind us.”

“Tonight then?”

“Confident, are we? I have enough to hold him,” he warned.

“We’ll see.”

“And Jordan, for the record, you look like shit too.”

“Burning the midnight oil. As always.”

“I thought things had settled down for you.”

“Domestically, perhaps. Abby is moving in next month. The job is still shit.”

“I’d imagine,” Ben shook his head, “How did a kid I went to Sunday school with end up selling his soul to corporate law?”

“I don’t have enough of your pops in my life anymore I guess. Evidently neither do you. You know your side is as corrupt and backward as mine, right?” he joked.

“It would seem so. Say where have you been on Sundays? Wachtell Lipton doesn’t have you working then too, do they?”

“Rarely. No it uh … do you remember Robert Rogers?”

“To clarify, the Scotsman who used to buy us beer at 7-11 in our more rebellious youth?”

“One and the same. I play football, well, soccer, on a team with him now. Matches are usually on Sundays, only time I get a chance to socialize. You should come round sometime.”

“You should wash your mouth out with soap for calling ‘soccer’ football. In the name of all that is holy,” Ben shook his head.

“Drinks tonight then?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve been up since around two.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

 

* * *

 

Ben came in forty-five minutes later with a canister of coffee, an ash tray and a file larger than Akinbode would have imagined.

“You smoke?” he asked Hewlett after uncuffing him, producing an etui Akinbode had seen before.

“I’m trying to quit.”

Ben held the gold plated case up to Jordan.

“I pretend to be an athlete on Sundays, so no.”

“Same way you pretend soccer is a sport?”

“Touché.”

Hewlett looked confused.

“Soccer is what we call football,” Akinbode offered, “and Inspector Tallmadge is doing exactly what I warned you he might. Charm you into thinking he harbors you no ill will in hopes that you’ll give him something he can use in return. What is in the folder, Ben? You said you’d have me out of here by lunch.”

Tallmadge went over Hewlett’s criminal record, a series of misdemeanors and one arrest for aggravated assault.

“Charges were never filed,” Hewlett clarified.

“Relevance?” Akinbode interjected.

Tallmadge held up a finger as he read the report to himself. Leaning across the table, he asked in a low, level tone, “If you were to kill somebody, Mr. Hewlett, would you do so in your girlfriend’s bar with a steak knife?”

Akinbode wondered what exactly the police had uncovered at DeJong’s. He wondered what he was doing there, and why he had spent the better half of the past four hours discussing strategy with Hewlett when his client answered with calculated nonchalance, “Probably not given that I lack the upper body strength to break more than the first four layers of skin as your report may also indicate.”

“Hewlett,” Akinbode said, intending for him to stop. No such luck. Rogers, even Simcoe, would have proven easier to defend.

“Lads fight sometimes. It came to nothing,” he almost smiled.

“Am I to take that to mean that this is _normal_ behavior for you? You were found afterwards by a patrol car wandering naked through the woods.”

“Not my proudest moment I’ll admit.”

Akinbode wondered if Ben could tell that he was lying. Hewlett probably had wet-dreams about the time he stabbed Simcoe and lived to tell the tale.

“It was in self-defense. Check my phone which you confiscated, we’re still mates,” he lied twice more.

“Be that as it may, let the record show that the suspect has a history of violence, a familiarity with Setauket’s terrain as well as with DeJong Tavern.”

“May I inquire into what _exactly_ was found in the bar?”

“Nothing,” the inspector answered.

“Nothing? Inspector -”

“Absolutely nothing. Not so much as a single finger print. Whoever was there last night certainly took measures to cover their tracks, though there appears to have been a struggle in the basement storage area. Ms. Strong informed us that some of the inventory couldn’t be accounted for. Tell me, Mr. Hewlett, do you favor Strongbow or Magner’s?”

“Don’t answer that.”

“Moving on then, with regard to the bar manager, your finance, no?” Hewlett nodded. Tallmadge continued, “Anna Strong nee Smith, very recently divorced, put in paperwork this morning for a marriage license. How long have the two of you been together?”

“On and off for two years.”

“She said the same. Reading through her social media updates suggests otherwise.”

“Do you put everything online, Inspector?”

“Not everything. That said, if I was in a relationship I certainly wouldn’t complain about the lack of sex in such a way: February 23rd, 2016, 15:36: How long has this dry spell been? How long must it last? at- Rainbow Station with - Caleb Brewster, Sally To, and 2 others” he paused, “317 _‘likes’._ December 16 th, 2015-”

“I’m a virgin,” Hewlett interrupted. Akinbode brought a palm to his face.

“Need I remind you that you are under oath?” Tallmadge asked.

“Ask my cardiologist or better yet, my multiple therapists. For the past nearly two decades I’ve been on drugs that have hampered with my ability to achieve and maintain an erection. Anna and I have never, and likely will never have sex,” he laughed. Akinbode wondered if he was being ironic. He might have done better to warn him that that sort of humor was largely wasted on Americans. “It’s not surprising that she would complain from time to time,” Hewlett continued, “but I should think there is more to a relationship than simply a physical element.”

Akinbode wondered if Hewlett had ever tried dating before deciding to marry. He wondered if Anna, who had proven time and again that she wasn’t smart enough to pass the bar (and must have given up on pretending to try) was also so dumb as to tell her parents that she was planning on marrying a foreigner she barely knew. She was certainly dumb enough to file for a marriage license whilst Hewlett was in custody.

He wondered if she had had Aberdeen drive her into the city, and what Aberdeen might decide to take in return - hoping it would be one of Anna’s many books with which to better herself. They were certainly doing Anna no good boxed up as they were. It occurred to him that perhaps the multiple trips he made from Selah Strong’s apartment to his car with Anna’s heavy crates were the reason for the pain in his shoulders and neck, and that he had been too hard on the imported Italian sofa he’d accused of being hard on him.

“I imagine, in what might prove the best case scenario for you, Mr. Hewlett, such a relationship might also involve quite a bit of paperwork, am I right?” Tallmadge asked, clearly unamused.

“Rendition,” Akinbode protested, “Hewlett, you don’t have to answer.”

“But you should. Let me outline what I think happened – Anna Strong, a girl with all the degrees and connections one could ever hope for, hides her bar results after her now ex-husband is sent off to Iraq as sentencing for a drug offence, serving three years under then General Arnold. At the same, Anna befriends Peggy Shippen and uses this connection to charm Arnold into coming into her bar on a night she isn’t working. Using you as her alibi-“

“Enough,” Hewlett spat, more forcefully than Akinbode thought him capable of.

“Mr. Hewlett, Miss Shippen has already admitted to the connection. She came in this morning to clear her name of any suspicion and has a solid alibi for last night.”

“As do I, as does Anna,” Hewlett shot back, reaching for a cigarette, “may I?”

The Inspector nodded. Akinbode fumed under the realization that Anna had passed the bar and had been standing behind one by choice. What had been the point of all the late night study sessions she’d organized? The flash cards she made, the books she read; how long had it all been for show? He looked at his client, who appeared nervous but not in the least bit surprised at his future wife’s unwillingness to enjoy the benefits that her education should have brought her. That she had so hotly pursued. Akinbode felt let down. He reached for the gold plated etui himself, coughing as inhaled.

“Did it never strike you as off that Ms. Strong chose to work in the Tavern when she could clearly have been doing something more worthwhile with her life?”

“Relevance?” Akinbode questioned, though he was keen to hear Hewlett’s response as well. “I’m sorry, Inspector, who exactly is under suspicion?”

“Did you kill Senator Arnold to impress your finance?”

“Of course not! I could never do such a thing and Anna would never ask. She is interested in American politics, certainly, but like myself, and yourself I should rather imagine, she would never break the _law_.”

“You right. Anna Strong has never broken the law. But _you_ have. You attacked an unarmed man in the very bar where Arnold was last heard from with a knife, according to witness statements. Tell me, which of your contacts helped you get off that time?”

Akinbode spoke before Hewlett could. “No charges were brought. John Graves Simcoe, the victim in question, denied ever having been injured by my client. If that is all you have, Inspector, than I think we are done here.”

“We’ll be talking to him, rest assured.”

“Fine,” Hewlett muttered.

Akinbode hadn’t been there that night, but he had a rough idea as to what happened from witness accounts. The pub had hosted a beer pong tournament, and John and Edmund both suffered from the sort of hubris that made them think they could beat a bar full of Americans at their own sport, on their own turf. Each round had cost them something like $20 to participate in, and by the time they reached the semifinals, they had run out of cash. Simcoe bet Hewlett’s expensive, and by that point beer-covered clothing in lieu of paying the fee, and when they lost, Hewlett was forced into a fleece blanket which he wore as a toga for the remainder of the evening. At some point, after warm beer had given way to hard liquor, Simcoe made reference to one of the multiple times he’d fucked his pong partner’s ‘fit’ sister (whatever that meant) back in York and found himself with a scratch on his chest. Hewlett was thrown out for the evening, and Easton, who’d called the cops –which wasn’t done- was given a lifetime ban. Abby had been pouring that night. The way she - and half the team - recalled the event, Hewlett hardly came off as a hardened criminal. Why was he doing his level best to play it that way now?

“Mr. Hewlett, immigration questions aside, I’m going to ask that you not leave the area.”

“On what grounds?” Akinbode challenged. “Your theory is circumstantial and speculative. With regard to the only item you were able to find after hours of searching through my client’s file, the single relevant fact lies in that no charges were sought. If you intend to use this as evidence of malicious character or intent, it won’t stand up in court. We both know that, Inspector. Are you done wasting my client’s time?”

Ben looked at the file again. “Your right, Counsel.” And with that the horror was over. Tallmadge thanked them for their time, solidified his plans with Akinbode and bid them both farewell, politely, despite his exhaustion and clear frustration. Hewlett, who seemed to be surprised at being allowed to walk, became cordial once more.

“I’m willing to cooperate in any way I can to put this silly mess behind us, Inspector. I misspoke this morning based on an assumption and nothing more.”

The inspector nodded, “We’ll see.”

 

* * *

 

“New York’s finest _my ass_!” Akinbode exclaimed when they were back on the street. He check the time. “Would you look at that? We got out in time for lunch after all, no thanks to you. What the hell was that in there? Acting tough when everyone know knows you knows you spend most Saturday nights in your room sipping on canned shellfish, reading dictionaries for fun and shit.” He didn’t know if that was how Hewlett spent his time, or if anyone shared his assumptions. Hewlett didn’t deny them, and so they would be forever solidified in Akinbode’s imagination.

“Ah, well, the Inspector, Tallmadge was it? He seemed rather set on throwing suspicion on dearest Anna, and I simply couldn’t allow that to happen.”

“Listen to me, if you are _ever_ in a situation like that again, think only of yourself. Anna Strong can call on her own senior defense team, she doesn’t need your help.”

“Yes I -well, that sounds accurate. What do you want for lunch? Extra compensation for your added troubles.”

“Oysters?” Akinbode grinned. Hewlett stopped to think.

“Want to go to The Newsroom? The have open for lunch on Wednesdays and I know the … um, well, maybe that won’t work out.”

“The Maître d’? What did you stab him too?”

“Nothing so vile, he simply knows about something I should really delete from my laptop, something that I rather wish he didn’t.”

“Alight, Newsroom it is. Come on,” he said, locating and unlocking his car remotely with a _beep_.

“We can walk. I’d wanted to stop by Barclay’s on the way.”

“This is America, son. The Newsroom is some thirteen blocks from here. That’s more than a mile, no one walks that far.”

“Exactly, this is America, where the hell do you want to park?”

“Point,” Akinbode agreed. He locked his car with the press of another button and followed Hewlett in the opposite direction.

Seven blocks later, after Hewlett had given a far too through explanation of what hentai was and Akinbode regretted ever asking, they saw a familiar face waiting in line at a street vendor.

“What the hell is he wearing?” Hewlett muttered.

“Let’s find out, Akinbode said before shouting, “Captain!”

 

* * *

 

If John Graves Simcoe could divorce effect from cause, he was having a rather pleasant day. He had been passionately kissed by a beautiful woman, unexpectedly made a few trades just before news broke which destabilized the world’s markets – benefiting Barclay’s -and his career- immoderately. His secretary had misunderstood part of his request and rather than make sure that a clean suit was waiting for him at the office, and had taken his spare to be laundered. Simcoe -who had arrived at the office too late to go home and change into something more appropriate of a workplace setting- was left with nothing but a denim shirt to throw on in place of his now ruined Rangers jersey. It had its benefits; the garment was far more comfortable to nap in, he could eat a hot dog from a street vendor without worrying about mustard staining something of value, and it seemed to be driving his closest friend mad.

Oh, and to that note, Edmund Hewlett had evidently spent the morning in an interrogation room.

John Grave Simcoe was having a rather pleasant day indeed.

“Do you realize the power you’ve given me?” he inquired with a smile, “I could go down to the police station right now and file back charges against you for the near mortal blow you dealt, and yet … you seem to think the best way of getting me to vouch for your … _upstanding nature_ is to insult my outfit?” Simcoe placed his left hand - the hand which wasn’t preoccupied with street meat – on his chest in dramatic faux indignation.

Hewlett returned his mocking tone with a hard one, sneering as he asked “Alright, Simcoe, would you like to join us for lunch? I’d wanted to sit down with you to discuss something anyway.”

“Oh, now that can’t be good. Alas, I’ve already my lunch sorted,” he waved his hot dog in front of the shorter man’s face. Hewlett produced a sealed letter from his Burberry Mac and mirrored the gesture. Simcoe broke first and reached for it, handing Hewlett the hot dog which he saw in his periphery was instantly thrown into a street rubbish bin.

Simcoe swallowed. His hands unconsciously fiddled with the edges of the paper as he read. He hadn’t been handed a letter at all.

“Where on Earth did you get this?” he whispered, leaning in.

“Through the combined intelligence of several international secret service agencies. Are you in?”

“Have you lost your damn mind?” Simcoe hissed, noting, as Hewlett perhaps had yet to, that they were discussing insider trading openly –albeit in hushed tones- on a crowded street of the finance district.

“Long ago, I fear. _Are you in?_ ”

“Oyster! Are you actively _trying_ to go to prison?”

“Twelve weeks. I haven’t had a chance to work out all the maths yet, but if you plug those figures into your algorithm -”

Simcoe glanced at the paper again. He wasn’t selfish. He didn’t enjoy money for the sake of wealth, but he enjoyed the challenge of beating the market. In the four years he had spent in America he felt that he had outgrown his current position at the corperation. Age kept him from promotion, but what he lacked in experience he more than made up for in instinct. Not three hours before he had received a call from Tristram Roberts inviting him back to London to discuss advancing his prospects. It wasn’t common to receive a call directly from the head of Human Resources, but then it wasn’t common to accidently profit from the free fall ignited by the disappearance of a man one had accidently murdered. Simcoe wondered if he was already guilty on some level of market manipulation. He wondered what shade of morally grey it was to take further advantage of something which he had already benefited from so immensely.  

Hewlett, for his part, was making it sound like a great service to the United Kingdom, as he, of course, would. At the end of his short speech – which suffered multiple interruptions between Hewlett’s nervous stutter and Akinbode’s interjections of _“Are you kidding me, man?”_ _“I just got you out of detention.”_ and _“I’m done with your ass.”-_ Hewlett said, as a means of punctuating his greater points, something that would ensure Simcoe’s cooperation; “Inspector Tallmadge is convinced of my involvement. As long as I can keep myself suspect I’ll be able to spy, or, as I did in this case, recruit others to spy for me. We can keep an eye on the hands that control the system, do you see? Europe and her partners are going to profit anyway, why shouldn’t we?”

“You’ve been reading Abby’s novel?” Akinbode asked, “I don’t know how far you are into it but that shit doesn’t end well.”

“Ah, yes, well-”

“Oyster,” Simcoe spoke at last, “You had me at _I haven’t done the maths yet_.”

“What?”

“You admit it, statistical analysis is a branch of mathematics and not, as you’ve so suggested, a mere science. Submission suits you,” he smiled. “Right lads, where’s lunch?”

As he led the way, Akinbode asked, “You’re actually in on this?”

“Mmm,” squeaked Simcoe in response, hoping the sound didn’t betray his doubt.

“As your lawyer, I’m forced to advise _both_ of you against it, but,” he speech slowed, “as your friend, I want in.”

“I’ll plug the numbers in when I get back to the office, if things pan out as Hewlett suggests they will and I have reason to suspect they might, I’ll start the paperwork and we can have a meeting to discuss investment options tonight. No. Tonight is bad for me. Can you lads meet me at mine tomorrow morning, early? We’ll say, around four?”

Neither offered a word of protest.

Those came first when Simcoe and Hewlett found themselves outside of The Newsroom for the second time that week,

“Honestly, you people act as if there is no other restaurant in the city.”

“Define _you people_ ,” Akinbode warned. Simcoe looked at Hewlett, trying to gauge if he had made a similarly insensitive statement earlier. Hewlett shrugged, nonplussed.  

“ _Children of privilege_ , but take it how you will. We not going in here.”

“I concur. It is a, a rather nice establishment, we’re not all in exactly proper attire, now are we?”

“C’mon, you promised Newsroom, now deliver.”

“I will, only …” Hewlett trailed off as he looked disparagingly at Simcoe. “Seriously mate, denim on denim?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Simcoe chirped as he strolled towards the entrance, “Let’s do this.”

“At least un-pop your collar,” Hewlett said as he reached up, “I’m not sure what sort of fashion statement you are trying to make but-” he stopped abruptly, seeing what Simcoe was trying to conceal.

“Honestly, that is why half the team thinks y’all two are gay.”

“Is that something people have a problem with? Do we need to have a little team meeting about tolerance and respect?” Simcoe replied as he fought to free himself of Hewlett’s caress.

“What the actual fuck, man?” Akinbode all but exclaimed as his eyes met Simcoe’s bruises. “Is that …?”

“You know right well what it is,” Simcoe affirmed, turning to Hewlett he added, “do you want to tell him, darling, or should I?”

“Are … are you alright?” Hewlett stammered, still lost for words.

“Little rumpy-pumpy ‘innit? Christ mate, how much of life is lost on you?”

“You had … sex then?” Hewlett gaped. Simcoe nodded. Akinbode high-fived him. Hewlett continued to look as if he would prefer to choke on his own vomit that open his wide mouth once more to inquire further. He waited until they were inside, until after Robert Townsend had greeted them and shown them to the table (which another party had been waiting more than an hour for), until after drinks and appetizers had been ordered and Akinbode was in the middle of the harrowing epic of how he’d saved him from being charged outright to finally finish his inquiry;

“You had sex … with Mary Woodhull?”

“That is a rather judgmental tone coming from someone who was just arrested for … murder,” Simcoe smiled mockingly as he readjusted his collar once more. It wouldn’t help. His friends would be staring at his neck for the better part of the afternoon, veiled or not. He wondered if Mary’s light pink lipstick still left a stain, if the contusions had darkened. He could still feel her soft lips turn to stone as they began to pull at his skin.

Five hours later, they still hurt like hell.

 

* * *

 

He pictured her sitting before him, her cherry blonde hair, slightly undone, flaming in the light of morning sun behind her against the dark interior of the café. There had been something wicked in her smile, something he ought to have taken warning of. Instead, he had returned it. And she moved in for a second kiss. His face flushed as he pulled away, his eyes darting to down Thomas who seemed not to have registered his mother’s aggressions.

“They’re gone, love,” he whispered, as if the Assistant Director with the Unfortunate Name and his companion were still seated meters from them.

“They’re gone,” she echoed excitedly. “It worked.”

Simcoe wanted to ask what exactly her hand was still doing on his chest as it slowly made its way down past the mascara stained Air Asia logo on his jersey. The otherwise breathable fabric was suffocating him as her fingers danced against it. He felt his jeans tighten as Mary slipped her still perfectly manicured nails into his front pocket, rattling with contents that pushed up against the base of his cock.

He wondered if she was aware of what she was doing to him; her eyes hadn’t left his, her gleeful expression hadn’t altered.

“There,” she said as she fished the now half empty pack of Gauloises out of his pocket, placing one between her lips with a flick of her hair and a little wink. “Care to join me?”

“I … can’t,” Simcoe stammered, half hoping that openly acknowledging his erection would, in fact, direct some of his raging blood flow back to his cheeks where it most certainly belonged.

“You can. Follow me closely.”

Mary turned to Thomas, ruffled his long blonde curls and told him to finish his breakfast, she would be right outside where she could see him.

Simcoe meanwhile adjusted his legs, remembering the last time he had had an odd public boner, when he was in the sixth form and Ellie Hewlett and Effie Gwillim came in late in their skin tight riding breeches to a morning maths lecture when he had been at the blackboard. The sound of the giggles that followed might have caused him resurgent embarrassment if he did not also have vivid, and frankly fond, memories of having fucked them both in the stables after class.

Mary reached for his hand and pulled him against her backside. He felt how tight her ass was as he struggled to conceal himself against it.

“I’m so sorry, this,” he started, stopping when he realized that he didn’t fully have a defense that didn’t involve an awkward recollection of a previous escapade.

“Don’t be. It has to look real, remember?” Mary teased as she pulled him outside.

“For who?” Simcoe asked. Mary’s answer came in the form of a kiss.

“You’re married,” he repeated her refrain from hours before remembering all at once the missing corpse of Benedict Arnold, the rodent-like features of her sniveling husband and the pepper spray that was likely still in her purse.

“In name.”

It was her tone more than anything else that killed his erection. Mary seemed simultaneously sad, self-conscious, angry and guilt ridden.

Anger was the emotion she latched onto as she told him to bend down. Against half-hearted protests she kissed, bit and sucked at his neck and earlobe, piercing him so hard as he turned away that he feared he might lose it.

“Mary,” he tried to scold, his voice betraying him with a moan.

“Got a light?”

“I have a job,” he replied as squinted to see his reflection in the glass panels, seeing only Thomas playing with the remains of his egg white omelet and the angry barista, taking enough of a break from listing the ways steamed milk could be mixed with fair trade espresso to give him a disgusted look. “Jealous?” he mouthed, before returning his gaze to Mary.

“You said you would be sleeping in your office for most of the morning. Anyway, your hair is long enough-”

“I can’t wear it down at the office and I should doubt that I’ll be able to avoid everyone I work with while I wait for these bruises to fade.”

“Isn’t that what Wall Street is? Hard drugs and loose women?”

“You’re not. Fuck … Mary, don’t sell yourself short, just because your husband might.”

She bit her lip and averted her gaze. It was the wrong thing to do, he knew, but he couldn’t stop himself. Simcoe took her face in his hands and gave her a long, tender kiss, lifting her slightly as they embraced. Mary Woodhull kissed with a ferocity he had never known, that consumed him and confused him and left him gasping for breath and grasping for reason. Before he placed the petit woman down, he gave her ear a small nip.

“Now were even.”

“Not so fast. Meet me back here at around seven?” she seemed to be thinking aloud. “We have to find that phone before the feds do. I think my prints are on it as well.”

“Do you have a criminal record?” Simcoe asked, wondering why Mary would be concerned.

“One I would rather like to keep a certain politician as far away from as possible.”

Simcoe agreed, lit her stolen cigarette as requested and watched her pace as she smoked it, thinking that the two of them were either the best actors in the world, or the absolute worst.

It had to _look_ real. Did it have to _feel_ so as well?

 

* * *

 

“Mary Woodhull? Remind me who that is again.”

“Hewlett and Anna’s housemate. Abe Woodhull’s wife, cute, reddish hair, works for Unicef.” He wanted to tell them more, he wanted to tell them _everything_ , but he had fought too hard to keep the secret he and Mary shared. The bruises on his next stung as his heart raced at the mere thought of her.

“Damn,” both of his companions said in unison with completely different inflections.

When the oysters came only Akinbode showed any real interest in eating them. Simcoe played by dipping his index finger into water and rubbing it along the rim of his glass to make it sing. Hewlett advised him on the matter.

“You have to drink some. The glass is too heavy and therefor vibrations are slower. Here,” he demonstrated, taking a sip and making a piercing ring. Simcoe fought back a smile. He hadn’t been aware of what his hands were doing. He never really was. It occurred to him that either very few people knew that or everyone did. When he looked at his hands he could still see Arnold’s blood.

“Have a cigarette with me?”

“Ah, sure. Alright.”

When they stepped outside Hewlett refused however, saying that he promised Anna to be more mindful of his health. Simcoe nodded, both disappointed that Hewlett was growing even more impossibly boring and pleased that he wasn’t shouldering the burden that was his friendship alone anymore.

“I should quit too. I know, I just, I get nervous and I fiddle with things. These make sense.”

“Your nervous?” Hewlett asked as if he had never considered the concept. “If this is about … we really need to think of a code name. Listen, if I’m asking too much-”

“It’s not and you not, but I have to know; why? If this ends badly- even if they end well, if your sins are uncovered, be it twelve weeks or two decades from now, well that’s it, ‘innit? Are you certain?”

Hewlett didn’t answer; instead after a moment of silence in which Simcoe had let half of his fag burn without touching his lips, he switched the topic back to Mary, “I’m not judging you, you know. I’m, it is just, I’m not quite as articulate as I’d rather fancy and I’ve … that is I’ve simply no idea what to say.”

“I actually wish you would in this case. Go on then, give me one of your infamous impositions of what you’d define as moral and righteous. Throw in a few obscure verses from the Good Book, make references to Greek poets and Roman orators no one understands, cite the Bard as if you are the only man alive who was made to suffer iambic pentameter in year eight, just tell me I’m wrong. I’m too tired right now to fight it.”

“Crist, am I that bad?”

“Worse. I can’t fathom how you possibly blind yourself to just how much people loath you.”

“You love me. Apparently. According to a half of the team that doesn’t include us anyway. And no lectures. Not today. Fuck it,” he reached for a cigarette while Simcoe lit himself a new one. “I’m in no place to judge; to save myself from eminent deportation I agreed to Andre’s ridiculous Green Card scheme, fell in love with the girl I’ve implicated, found out she’s using me for money I don’t have and thusly resorted to trying to use information I accidently learned through various acts of espionage to help her out of her self-imposed situation. I got myself arrested and acted like an absolute sociopath in front of a man who wants to charge me with murder. All so … if and more probably, _when_ I go down, no one else has to suffer the consequence of my decisions. I don’t … I don’t even know if she loves me as she claims or if I’m just playing myself. But there it is. Do what you will, I’m unfit to lead.”

“You’ve picked a hell of a day to try to turn over a new leaf, you know that?”

“And you’re not the only one who’s had an absolute shite past twenty four, or, no. Sex. I forgot. Must be wonderful.”

“Mary and I aren’t having an affair, not really, I, she is having problems in her marriage and, I suppose she thinks it expedient to -”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Is it relevant?”

“No. I suppose it isn’t. You’ve just been, I’m … concerned.”

“Can we not do this? Ever?”

“Fine. But for what little its worth, I think she likes you too.”

“Bugger off, yea?” Simcoe snapped back as Hewlett poked at his bloodied ear.

“Does it hurt?”

“Immensely,” he smiled, thinking of something he could add to torment Hewlett. “Maybe you’ll understand someday.”

 

* * *

 

When they returned Akinbode had finished the oysters. He was laughing to the maître d’ about something on his phone.

“There you are, I’ll get your entrees then,” Townsend said as his own phone buzzed in his back pocket.

“Maybe you’ve got one too,” Akinbode offered.

“Doubtful. I tweeted something from the band account earlier that when viral and we keep getting more followers. It has been doing that all morning. Whether that translates to more bodies at shows remains to be seen, though I find it doubtful.”

“Let’s see then,” Simcoe said reaching for his device, “Oh, oh wait now, fuck, this is gold. Yes, bring the food and a bottle or port, news like this deserves a proper toast.”

“And here I thought my stocks would plummet after the loss of my best customer,” Townsend remarked dryly.

“Bring a forth glass, have a drink with us,” Hewlett implored.

“I’ll stick to my coffee, thanks.”

“That’s not very … _punk rock_ of you, now is it?” Simcoe peeped.

“Very good, sir,” Townsend said as he left.

 

* * *

 

John Graves Simcoe was having a rather pleasant day, despite the murder, the insider trading and Akinbode’s insistence that Andre checking himself into rehab was a quadrennial event, or, as he chose to simplify it for his audience _“about as regular as a World Cup or a Diana inquiry.”_

Hewlett maintained that he was proud of Andre for seeking the help he needed. Akinbode confessed that he saw the same elephant in the room everyone else was trying to ignore; Abigail was clearly smitten. Simcoe was just glad to have him far away from the people he seemed set on hurting, especially now that he knew exactly how close he himself was to the line that should never be crossed.

By the time their main course arrived with the bottle they had ordered, Simcoe and Hewlett had taken to reading texts from the group chat aloud, which Akinbode explaining the finer points of the dialogue they only half understood.

“No, that is a reference to Arijan Ademi, the Dinamo player holding Roger’s gambling wins in dispute”

“You’re kidding. A UEFA decision? That is what their feud is about?”

It was by now common knowledge that Rogers thought Andre owed him money, as was often the case. The current argument, like the countless that had preceded it, would likely never be resolved. It was unsurprising that it was over something petty, impersonal and uninteresting. It always was.

Hewlett read on in his early canny Rogers impersonation. Simcoe responded to the continued, increasingly incoherent, demands that he not leave without first paying a sum of $200 as Andre himself did, by ignoring them completely and waxing poetic. At some point it had ceased to be funny. Among John Andre’s many talents was the ability to play a martyr while confessing to his faults. He sent various well-thought-out apologies and well-wishes to most of the members of the team individually, though he might have done better to have simply written _“Love and pity me, as I do you when it otherwise suits my interests”_ fifteen times. Akinbode got something in Italian, which he said was congratulatory and superfluous – he wrote back bluntly, “ _hai detto che mi avrebbe aiutato a spostare casa.”_

Simcoe’s missive was itself restricted to sport, with compliments to his management of the team as its captain, which must have been rather difficult for John Andre to write. It resonated very little with someone who was so glad to see him go. Even Rogers received a fond farewell after Andre wrote in all caps that he would never, under any circumstances, be paid the $200 he most certainly was not owed.

Hewlett received nothing. He would find out weeks later that Andre had been cautioned not to speak to him directly while charges of medical malpractice - which he had been unable to persuade his former research collaborator not to report - were being investigated. For the moment, with no further insight as to why he had been singularly ignored, Hewlett let the slight embitter him.

Akinbode was annoyed by the whole of it, if he should have to suffer through a text in his second language, why not everyone else? Technically, Simcoe informed him, though it be his primary, English was his second language if they were assigning languages a lineal numbering system. _“Maybe Andre isn’t done showing off and is trying to write you something in Latin?”_ he suggested. It annoyed him that Hewlett had been left out of the fun – he seemed hurt. Simcoe wondered if he would have an opinion on this at all if Hewlett had not unknowingly offered himself as a decoy.

“Alright lads. Let’s take a selfie and send the good doctor off with a parting toast.”

 

               

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t have too many terms that weren’t immediately defined in the text this time, but before I shower you all in my affections:
> 
>  _Wachtell Lipton_ \- one of New York’s more prestigious corporate law firms
> 
>  _Strongbow / Magners_ \- brands of hard apple cider; I personally prefer Magners (which is sold as Bulmers in its native Ireland)
> 
>  _Rainbow Station_ \- an erotic shop in NYC 
> 
> _Arijan Ademi_ – a Macedonian midfielder who tested positive for doping in a Champion’s League Qualifier in which his club, Dinamo Zargreb beat Arsenal 2 -1. The result was allowed, the player was suspended for four years.
> 
>  _“Hai detto che mi avrebbe aiutato a spostare casa.”_ \- Italian, “You said you’d help me move house.” (And I am so, so, sorry if I wrote this wrong. I get a chance to use Italian one every two years or so and as much as I wish it weren’t the case, I am pretty lapse about reviewing my grammar in the interim.) 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading, as always! I know I’m awful, giving you guys such a long update after such a long wait, but I was pretty busy before going on holiday and not sure where to break this up I left it in its 25 page glory. Comments and Kudos are always appreciated, never necessary. I hope that you are enjoying the last days of summer.
> 
> XOXO – tav
> 
> Up Next: keep your friends close and your enemies ... busy


	12. The Front Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching the detectives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurs to me that I have reached a part in this narrative when I can no longer produce weekly updates. Given the nature of the plot, my recent chapters are weighing in at around 15K words. This takes a little longer to produce than I have come to expect and may have established a pattern for posting. Hate to say it, but _Hide and Seek_ is going bi-weekly (at best). Thanks for your patience with these extended pauses, and as always, for your continued readership. I really appreciate it!  
>  _This_ chapter however I decided to break up. We have seen so little of the cops so far and so much goes down in this chapter’s second act that I did not want their narratives to get lost or forgotten. (… _like Senator Arnold?_ )  
> Anyway, you’ll get your romance and rejection by the weekend if everything goes according to plan.  
> As I’ve no trigger warnings this go around, shall we proceed? Fabulous!

Of all of the glamourous locations to which Aberdeen imagined driving the Jaguar in the ninety-five minutes that elapsed between spying for Mr. Hewlett and his arrest, One Police Plaza was not among them. Nor was One-Forty-One Worth Street – but- she assured herself, she was still in Manhattan, as was _The Newsroom._ She distracted herself from the tedium of sitting still with dreams of her boss’s best friend, the absurdly handsome maître d’ with a sharp tongue and a slow temper. Soon, she thought. She looked around wondering when soon would come. Abe Woodhull sat beside her, cradling his head in his hands. Anna Strong had given up on sitting altogether and was staring out of an office window to the parking lot below.

When Miss Strong noticed Aberdeen’s glance she pressed her full lips into a forced smile as was characteristic of her ‘class’ and ‘breeding’, the au pair thought mockingly, attributing Hewlett’s faults to his would-have-been missus. The woman who had been there before -the one they were all waiting on to return- most certainly did not smile when she made eye contact, which Aberdeen appreciated. Her hard stare felt more appropriate; it was refreshing, for those in clear positions of power were so rarely honest in their demeanour. She was shorter than Anna, stern and stout, though she wore her excess with a befitting elegance. She did not address Aberdeen in the entire half hour she spent scolding her daughter. Mr. Woodhull warranted only a slight eye roll as she greeted him by stating both of his names. He was likely as grateful as she herself was that the District Attorney showed so little interest in his presence, albeit for different reasons. Whereas Aberdeen had something to hide, Abe was simply too hungover to carry on a conversation.

From the time he had come home at a time that was morning (if one were to judge by a clock) and was night (if one were to judge by the absence of sunlight), Mr. Woodhull had had very little to say. He yelled at his wife, spoke to Jordan over the phone briefly at the request of the latter, and then complained and stubbornly insisted on accompanying Miss Strong to the City Clerk’s Office. After telling her insistently and emphatically that she was not going to marry Edmund Hewlett, he remained silent until a bureaucrat’s refusal to grant an application without both parties being present allowed him to say, _“I told you so.”_

All of his sentences were brief, all of them begrudged.

He had barely spoken at all since entering the police station.

Aberdeen would have had quite a lot to say were a question posed to her. Jordan had warned her not to speak and yet she found herself in the office of the city’s most powerful prosecutor anyway. No one noticed her panic until it passed.

“It shouldn’t be too much longer,” Anna tried to reassure her.

They had been waiting for the better part of an hour for Anna’s mother to re-join them. From what Aberdeen understood of the situation on the floor, a pharmaceutical sales representative who the NYPD had been after for months had been captured by the force of coincidence. He had a meeting with some mob boss to discuss getting his company’s product back on the street in the same hotel where Senator Arnold would have slept had Mr. Hewlett not killed him. The District Attorney called this a _'consolation'_ and seemed happy enough with her prize. Anna likely hoped to use her mother’s unexpected shift in fortune to her benefit. Thus far Nancy Smith had disclosed nothing about the case involving Edmund other than occasionally throwing in _‘he is a dangerous criminal’_ with her _‘you really know how to pick them’_ s and _‘are you doing this to punish me?s_ ’”

Abe Woodhull nodded while she spoke. Aberdeen copied his gestures in hopes of contending with the banality in which she felt herself entrenched.

She looked at the clock on the wall. _The Newsroom_ was open for lunch on Wednesdays and Sundays from eleven to three. The holdup was probably to her benefit. By the time DA Smith was finished yelling at the cartel, Robert Townsend would be getting off. Maybe he would step outside while she drove by slowly; smiling and asking him if he had anywhere he needed to be. Abe was too hungover to ruin it, and there would be room in the car. From what the District Attorney had indicated, Hewlett was not going to be released and she would personally ensure that a man called Cooke would not set bail. Aberdeen might have panicked if she did not believe that Jordan would not let him give her up in his presence and Hewlett would not speak on record without a barrister. It will be fine, my plan, she told herself. She then remembered Anna mirroring her mother’s wagging finger. Aberdeen wondered if she could simply leave her there at the station to morn her lost lover, or if that would be rude and would get her scolded. Anna might kill the mood she hoped to set with Robert.

“I’m in no great hurry, ma’am.”

“Aberdeen, were friends, no need for formalities. It’s Anna, just Anna, okay?” the woman whom Aberdeen had known through their mutual acquaintances for a little over a year said. _Just Anna_ seemed to have convinced herself of this, but Aberdeen was almost certain that she had not known her name until Abe introduced her as his au pair that same morning.

“Right, Anna.”

Like her betrothed, _Ann-ah_ , not _Ah-na_ corrected Aberdeen’s pronunciation, pressed her lips together in way meant to mimic a smile and offered an alternative. “Or Annie, if you want.”

There were quite a lot of things Aberdeen wanted to call the Hewletts that had nothing to do with Christian names or diminutives, but she kept those to herself and smiled at them as she nodded.

A phone buzzed with the promise of temporary release from the bright room that was bringing to feel like a prison. Both women searched through their handbags. Anna’s face fell when she saw that hers was not ringing, as did Aberdeen’s when she saw the name of her real boss on the display.

“Good afternoon, Mary,” she answered in forced cheer.

“Aberdeen, listen. I know this is inconvenient but is there any way you could pick up Thomas from day-care? Now or as soon as possible? You can take the train out to the city and drive back in my car, or borrow Father’s if he is around. Or Miss Strong’s if she is willing. No,” she paused, “not Anna’s. You might both get sick from the stench.” She rarely heard Mary this flustered. Aberdeen rose immediately, assuming something had happened to the boy.

“I ‘ave ‘Ewlett’s car now, but I am at the police station. I can maybe leave. Is Thomas okay? Is ‘ee sick?”

“Thomas is fine; he bit a classmate and has been suspended for the rest of the week.”

“Thomas _bit_ someone?” Aberdeen repeated, adding, “that is very unlike ‘im.”

“I know, I know. It is probably my fault. I bit Sssah– ah- you know what,” she said, regaining her poise, “I’ll explain later.” Both were aware that Mary, for all of her pride and dignity, most certainly would not be forthcoming with further details. Aberdeen, for her part, did not much care for things that did not concern her immediate interest and forgot the words as soon as they were spoken. After a short pause, Mary changed the topic. “Did you say that you are at a police station with Hewlett’s car? Did you … God, I’m sorry to have to make these kind of assumptions, but is it _hot?”_

Aberdeen wondered if Mary had ever heard a certain proverb about people living in houses made of glass. She took a deep breath before answering.

“No, ‘ee was arrested at the tavern and Mr. Woodhull and I went to pick Miss Strong up at there. Miss Strong’s – um _Ann-ah’s_ \- car is too full with things she worried might get stolen in the downtown. She wanted to go to the City Clerk and because I am the only person who can drive a stick shift, I am acting as a chauffeur. Mr. Woodhull came along to tell her that she was not going to marry Mr. ‘Ewlett, and he was right because the City Clerk or some lady who works for ‘im won’t allow it. Also … Mr. ‘Ewlett is never getting out of jail because ‘ee killed a senator late last night. But it is okay because ‘ee said this morning that I could borrow ‘is car if I put the petrol back in it,” she half-lied in her care not to say anything about her involvement in the crime she had originally assumed he had been arrested for. “We’re friends now,” she added, seeing Anna’s indignation at her otherwise factually accurate summary of events.

“Jesus,” Mary said, echoing Aberdeen’s annoyance.

“Do you want to talk to Mr. Woodhull? ‘Ee is sitting next to me. ‘Ee asks about Thomas,” she fibbed as she nudged him. “We’re waiting on Ms. District Attorney to finish yelling at Mr. Drug Cartel, and when she comes back we ‘ave to drink a coffee with ‘er and then we can leave. I can go now and come back.” She glanced at Abe for his approval. He shrugged.

“I don’t want Thomas at a police station and I don’t want my husband alone in a room with that, that – No, it is fine Aberdeen. I needed an excuse to take the afternoon off anyway. Stay with my husband. Text me if anything develops with regards to … Mr. Hewlett’s impending imprisonment? Odd.”

Aberdeen agreed to do these things as she questioned why Mary chose to empathize the words _my husband_ each time she spoke them.

“Travel safe,” her boss said before hanging up. It was an unusual turn of phrase; one that Aberdeen had marked hearing on a pervious occasion, though not through Mary’s lips.

“Travel safe,” she repeated to a dead line.

 

* * *

 

He had seen the world, or parts of it. Enough, at any rate, for him to recognize that no one was bound to lie more during an investigation than the detectives. Investigation, he thought scornfully. This was a hostage situation, and international bureaucracy was its host.

It was ironic, he considered, that the disappearance of Senator Arnold had tipped off this chain reaction. If half the players could be trusted to cooperate, the man would receive from his absence everything his caucus had been filibustering Congress for since the session began. Whether he lived to see it was any man’s guess. Benedict Arnold was irrelevant. There were now treaties and trade deals at stake.

Lafayette had asked if he believed the whole thing had been orchestrated when they first heard the news. Hamilton had his own scepticisms, but no was his answer. He would have liked to think at least that his superiors would have given him advanced knowledge, but even if this was a pipe dream, all the evidence spoke against conspiracy. It was now his job to help create one, after all. The FBI’s official involvement with the Arnold Investigation was a proxy. Alexander Hamilton had seen his job reduced to secretary, coordinating the calendars of men of action. Arnold himself was on no one’s present adgenda.

This left the investigation itself in the hands of the NYPD, or, more specifically, a man named Tallmadge whose name had scarred the profession of policing. Hamilton had liked him from the instant they met that morning outside Whitehall, the country estate of the chief justice of the state’s highest court. As of the night before, Tallmadge reported, the bar manager from the tavern where the senator had last been heard from was leasing a room. And who was she exactly? The daughter of the man who’s pen had nearly brought Woodhull to ruin. Alexander himself had read it countless times and written several reactions to the piece, published anonymously for reasons apparent. He was suddenly interested. More so when the door opened to an Englishman who claimed to love her. Edmund Hewlett, he discovered over the initial course of questioning, was from a minor house of landed nobility to which he owed his name. His mother, a commoner with loose clan ties, had been arrested and jailed for eco-terrorism in the mid-seventies. Curious pair, he thought. More curious still was the story of how Edmund had come to live at Whitehall, how he had moved Anna –newly divorced from a man who had served three tours under Arnold in the War on Terror- into what was essentially enemy territory. Hewlett was overheard speaking of murder as he stood before an un-swept crime screen. ‘ _Insidious’_ Tallmadge had said of the entire situation.

Hamilton agreed. It was all too conspicuous to be purely coincidental.

He relayed this much to the DNI on their last conference call.

An hour later Martha Dandridge arrived at Federal Plaza after receiving a call from the same man. Hamilton had worked with her before, though not recently, and knew her to be swift and efficient. She was meant to establish a criminal profile, one, perhaps that fit the model that was already being sold to the public, or would have been, had the damned press core not been so focused on an internal investigation from four years prior. She was no use to him at the main office. Not when Tallmadge already had a real suspect in custody. Washington or the man who shared the capitol’s name could yell at him later. He was sure that he would, just as he was sure that he would be able to argue by the time he received the call that their European allies were dragging their feet.

He knew the world, or enough of it, to know that no one lied during an inquiry more than a detective.

Except perhaps Tallmadge who was far too green to be handling a hostage situation.

 

* * *

 

After spending fifteen minutes in his office with the individual who had identified himself as a character witness, Inspector Benjamin Tallmadge was beginning to empathise with his primary suspect. Nothing of what the man with a bruised neck and a bleeding ear chose to relay gave any credibility to the idea of Edmund Hewlett’s innocence, but his explanations left Ben with a clear notion of why one would be driven to attack John Graves Simcoe. For a moment, he found himself wishing that Hewlett had better aim as he listened to Simcoe prattle on in a high pitch puberty ought to have phased out.

“ _Et tu, Brute?_ I asked. It was a great joke … did not land though, which I suppose you could take one of two ways; either Hewlett is not anywhere near as literary as he claims to be, or he was plastered enough to both try to take _me_ in a fight and to miss a Shakespeare reference. I offer my assurance that nothing came of it, Inspector… Tallmadge was it?” The man sounded like a toy Ben wished he had not purchased for his dog. Simcoe continued to click the retractable pen he had been given to write a sworn statement. There was no rhythm to it, but Ben subconsciously sought one, a fruitless exercise that threatened to drive him to madness. He had reached the point of exhaustion where nothing quite felt real.

Nothing?

Ben reconsidered, allowing for the exception of the blood and bruising that distracted from Simcoe’s claims and perhaps devalued them entirely.

“You say you came here to provide this account at Hewlett’s request?”

“Indeed,” Simcoe grinned. There was something disquieting in his smile. It was not forced, but it was clearly fake. The Inspector felt as if he were being openly mocked; Simcoe closed his lips, tilting his head slightly as if indicating that this was his intent.

“Were you in any way pressured?” Ben rubbed at his earlobe, gazing uncomfortably at Simcoe’s.

“No, this is from my illicit lover,” he answered, pulling down his collar to reveal the remainder of the string of contusions and small cuts, dark against his alabaster skin.

Ben winced.

“You might want to have that looked at. The human bite can be highly infectious,” he thought for a moment before reaching into his desk drawer and pulling out a first aid kit, “I think I have Neosporin in there, feel free to take a bandage too.” Simcoe looked at the contents of the box hesitantly.

“You don’t often seek medical attention, do you?”

“With respect, sir,” Simcoe taunted, “it was a kiss.”

“A kiss in the way your having been stabbed by Mr. Hewlett was, to quote,” he looked again at the statement and jabbed in a mock-English accent, “ _just a row, yea?”_

Simcoe seemed to take the suggestion seriously. He suddenly seemed very far away. His face lost every hint of expression and though his eyes did not deviate from their position, Ben could tell he was no longer looking at him.

“Why … yes, Inspector,” Simcoe concurred after returning from wherever his mind went to reflect. “I believe you may be on to something.”

Ben could not tell for sure if he was employing sarcasm or not. Simcoe gave him a chilling half smile and a slight shrug. It was all a game to him. Ben felt as though Simcoe had him at a loss.

The witness rose with a stretch, “If that is all, Inspector, I fear I am needed back at the office.”

“It is not, Mr. Simcoe. Please sit down. I have a few more questions and” he sighed, “for reasons of the press, I cannot possibly allow you to walk out of police headquarters like that.”

Ben knew scandal too well already. Four years prior, a woman died in a holding cell. She had been the victim of an aggravated break-in. When police were slow to respond she had enacted her constitutional right to firearms and protected herself where the NYPD had failed. She should never have been arrested, and Ben should have never been involved.

In truth, he had not been. He first learned of Sarah Livingston’s unlawful incarceration with the rest of America after her tragic death. An autopsy later revealed that he had lain with her three nights prior to her death. The press ran a leak and the narrative was distorted. Mistrust grew between the police and the public for reasons far removed from all of the areas where reform was so clearly, so crucially needed. His crime was consensual sex; his punishment was the ruin of his name.

Ben had not slept with anyone since. He kept a low profile, rarely going out, rarely divorcing himself from his desk. The friends he had not lost to scandal he had lost to the inevitable passage of time. Jordan Akinbode, the last holdout, mentioned that he was moving in with his long-term girlfriend. A ring would likely follow. After the wedding, Ben doubted they would see each other much at all. Maybe at Christmas, and when, then only at church.

In the meantime, he had a case that was attracting a lot of media attention and a name the press had not forgotten.

Which was not even to mention the man at his desk who looked as though he may have been strangled. No, the self-declared character witness could not leave the room this way, illicit lover or not.

 

* * *

 

Ben was in the middle of cleaning the slight injury as Simcoe grimaced from the sting of disinfectant when the door swung open after a curtesy knock.

“Tallmadge! Why aren’t you in interrogation?” Nancy Smith never questioned, she only critiqued. Answers and explanations were largely irrelevant to her. “If you’ll allow for an interruption,” she continued in her deep smoker’s voice, “I would like to introduce Dr Dandridge. She is working with the FBI to establish a profile – _Jesus fucking Christ, what have you done?”_ She did not allow Ben to respond. Dropping her bag and all interest in the contracted phycologist, she rushed to where her eyes fell.

“Mr. Hewlett, Nancy Smith, New York District Attorney,” she said reaching out her hand. Simcoe, astonished, took it without offering a correction. He was not afforded the chance. “Truth be told, I never wished to meet you,” she spat, “though least of all under these circumstances. Please accept my sincerest apologies on behalf of the entire force for the treatment you’ve endured. Brutal examination tactics are not condoned by the NYPD and - following an investigation- appropriate punishment will be sought on your behalf.” With that, she dropped Simcoe’s hand and shifted her attention her attention back to Ben. Before his boss could continue on one of her infamous tirades of chastisement, Ben spoke.

“Ma’am. This is John Graves Simcoe; he came in voluntarily to provide a character witness. And he arrived in this state.”

Nancy’s black eyes hardened. He had some degree of sympathy with her unspoken anger. The most high-profile investigation of her tenure had been taken from her long before she was forced by principle to recuse herself from it. Though the FBI claimed that they had the intent of working in cooperation with local police, it was clear from the onset they had very little interest in collaboration. Her anger was understandable; Ben shared it.

Then again, knowing the DA as well as he had come to, it was easy for him to imagine her being disappointed that the alleged killer set on corrupting her daughter had not, in fact, been beaten up by one of her boys in blue. Fighting a smile at the thought he suspected they shared, Ben shifted his attention.

He glanced at the small, demure woman with a kind but weary expression he assumed to be Dr Dandridge.

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said extending his hand.

“All mine, I’m sure.”

“I am afraid there has been a mix up somewhere. Edmund Hewlett is no longer in police custody. There simply was not enough evidence to hold him.”

Smith threw up her hands in blatant frustration. Dandridge said something reassuring; Ben was not certain if it was meant for him or for his boss.

“We know each other, don’t we?” the DA turned back to Simcoe, lifting her chin ever so slightly.

“We do in fact; I’m a friend of your daughter, dear Anna,” Simcoe explained. He reached for his phone. “If I may, I believe this is the man you are looking for,” he said as he displayed a picture showing him, Akinbode and Hewlett holding up a half empty bottle of Velha Colheita. Nancy looked at Ben sceptically as he identified the other two men in the photograph – clearly taken that afternoon.

“I didn’t have enough to hold him, ma’am,” he repeated.

Nancy scrutinized the picture she had not asked to see in silence, becoming visibly confused, “Is that really him?”

Simcoe answered quickly, “Believe it or not, we were at school together, Hewlett and I. It is the drugs, I fear … reeks absolute havoc on the skin. He is only thirty-five if you can believe it.”

There was something different in his tone. This was not chitchat; this was combat. Simcoe curled his lip.

“Drugs?” Smith pressed.

“Forgive me, ma’am. I know so little about that aspect of his life - having absolutely no association with it - that I fear it isn’t mine to comment. We’re friends but we live such different lives,” Simcoe shook his head in disapproval. “He is currently unemployed, you see. At least prior to meeting your lovely daughter, I know he was up all night at underground progressive post-punk venues – not quite to my taste I confess. ” It sounded like a misrepresentation; just as everything else Simcoe said did.

DA Smith seemed to believe him. Ben realized that he knew very little about her daughter Anna. The girl he met that morning was deceive, practical, smart and wilful, rather like a reserved version of her mother. Ben had his suspicions as to what extent Anna had really fallen for Hewlett’s charms, whatever they may be.

He glanced back to the witness. Simcoe’s expression said ‘ _I don’t understand it either._ ’ Ben realized that Simcoe had not come to vouch for Hewlett at all; he had come because he thought doing so would please the fiancé of the man he called his friend.

There had to be a connection.

“They let you into _The Newsroom_ like that?” the DA asked, as she returned Simcoe’s phone.

“Pains me though it does to say it, I know the Maître d’, and if this is about the shirt, in my defence I’d planned on having a hot dog from a street vendor.”

“It is about your ear, Mr. Simcoe. Tallmadge, finish up and meet me outside. Martha,” she said, returning her attention back to the woman whom she had come to introduce, “forgive the miscommunication. I am sorry that your time was wasted.”

“Actually, I would like to speak to the witness if I may,” she smiled, raising her perfectly painted eyebrows slightly.

“I’ll get uniform in for you.”

“Ma’am, I could-” Ben started, embarrassed at being kicked out of his own office only moments after identifying a possible pressure point.

“Outside, Benjamin,” the DA gave no room for argument.

He sighed, but followed.

Before leaving the room, Ben whispered Anna Strong’s name to the profiler. “Give me ten minutes,” she winked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only have two notes for you, and one is more of a correction:
> 
> _Chief Justice_ \- technically the incorrect nomenclature. The highest court in NY (The Court of Appeals, not, as in most states The - - Supreme Court) appoints judges, not justices, for 14 year terms. Now this can annoy you when you’re listening to _The Gabfest_ or wherever you go to get your court updates.
> 
> _DNI_ \- Director of National Intelligence, the big boss who oversees the seventeen U.S. secret service agencies. Seventeen! (For comparison, we’ve seven in Germany.)  
> What I love the most about American history after watching _Turn_ is how it had spies before it had international recognition. Brilliant. 
> 
> As stated previously, I will get the rest of what I’ve written since last we spoke up and posted soon. Till then, I love your comments and kudos, and all of you naturally. Thanks for reading as always! If your school or uni term is about to begin, best of luck! (If not … want to trade?)
> 
> XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up next: Mary feels betrayed by her own heart (and a few choice individuals). Simcoe examines his relationships and how best to exploit them; he then comes to a horrifying conclusion while talking with a profiler. Mama Smith gets a consolation prize in the form of Big Pharma after recusing herself from the Arnold case. Hewlett is ghosted on social media, confronts a thief and makes another unlikely ally. Aberdeen schemes to make Robert notice her. Ben tries to make sense of it all.  
> (Aren’t you a little glad I didn’t make you take the whole thing in one shot? You’ll have around 25 pages more soon, I promise.)


	13. The Swedish Capitol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jealous gingers, estranged (and strange) friendships, one-sided affairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as warnings go, I have a twofold one regarding language (length and vulgarity, respectively). Other than that, romance and rejection are thrown into the usual mix of manipulation, extortion, blackmail, fraud, larceny and self-deprecation. Specifics include (but are not restricted to) an animal killed in cold blood, consensual (but underage) sex discussed candidly, empty intercourse and foreplay (parts of which are not heteronormative), E.coli and vehicular impact.
> 
> There is also a risk that a third of the way through this monstrosity (if not sooner) you may want to punch the deuteragonist. 
> 
> Still with me? Great! As always, I hope you enjoy.

“I’m speechless, Tallmadge! Speechless!” The District Attorney asserted emphatically after hailing down a constable and showing her into Ben’s office. She followed with an equally forceful contradiction to her claim of having nothing to say. “How could you let the suspect go? If nothing else you could have sought to hold him on charges of immigration fraud.”

“I tried that route,” Ben defended, “Ma’am; I have to ask, is this personal?” It was not a question as much as it was a reminder. This was not her case. Thanks to federal involvement, it was barely his. He was hesitant to discuss it in a crowed hall. Ben could feel the stares of more senior officers, jealous of a predicament enviable from their outside position. Everyone saw the assignment as having the potential to be career making, yet he felt his contributions were irrelevant and redundant. ADIC Hamilton had sent a mere civilian in to interrogate a suspect he had released; and the woman to whom the entire force bowed would not cease reminding him of this failing. Still, Ben could not help but pity Nancy Smith. Her office was decorated with photographs of her children. It was his understanding that she never otherwise saw her beautiful, smiling daughter outside of those picture frames. Anna, she once told him, would have frowned if she had known that the image she was to be in was fated for her mother’s desk. _Spiteful_ , she claimed. The morning seemed to corroborate the accusation.

He had heard whispers from those she worked with directly, when Anna failed to show up at a promotion or an office party in celebration of her mother’s achievements, that Nancy had never missed a single of her daughter’s soccer matches, even after she’d divorced the girl’s father and been told that her presence was no longer wanted. That it never had been. Ben had no way of verifying if any of the rumours he heard about the senior prosecutor’s home life were true. Whenever the job called him into DA Smith’s shrine to her estranged offspring however, he found himself calling his own mother afterward to check in. Yes, he would be at church on Sunday. Yes, he would stay for dinner if he could.

The DA bit her upper lip. Throwing her hands into little fists and placing them on her wide hips to make herself seem more imposing, she leaned in and asked, “Do you think Hewlett is guilty? In relation to Arnold, I mean.”

“I think he is involved,” Ben answered. If forced to choose between virtues, he would rather be honest than kind.

“Then it’s personal. Do you have children, Tallmadge?”

“I do not.”

“As a mother,” she started, her eyes shifting uncomfortably to the heavens. Whatever thought then entered her mind in the second she paused to stare at the florescent lights seemed to change it.

“Please keep me informed,” she continued, shifting her tone from concerned parent to competent public official. “I’ll make sure you don’t get derailed by the likes Jordan Akinbode again. Although maybe not. It would be … convenient if Di Martello doesn’t have to face him in full focus when they meet in Albany next week. The city really can’t afford to lose the food truck revenue. - Anyway,” she sighed again, “I wanted to let you know, Cooke is in the process of signing your warrant. It’s been a nightmare. Not one of my assistants was exactly forthcoming in authorizing a search on Whitehall lest it effect a ruling. Everyone seems to have to argue before Judge Woodhull’s bench this session. Cowards, the lot! And the fucking feds won’t move, of course. Get used to that. If I -”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted.

Nancy threw up her hands, motioning for his silence.

“It is not you who let me down. It is our system. It is a lack of faith in our public officials, Judge Woodhull included. It’s that damn senator who had to go missing in New York City as if there weren’t plenty of other stops on his speaking tour. It is not you. Not at all.”

No, Ben thought. It is Anna. He gave his boss a soft smile, knowing she was thinking it too. Unexpectedly, she returned it.

“I better get back then; you’ll never believe what I got as a consolation prize. Say goodbye to Martha for me when she’s finished.”

“What then?”

“Oh, you’ll love this. It is your case, Tallmadge. Big Pharma. Jefferson is in holding,” she laughed. “Found him in Arnold’s hotel not an hour ago with a suitcase of Oxy set for the street.”

Ben’s heart stopped. Smith went on to explain that Baker, one of the offer’s he had sent to sweep the hotel had stumbled in on a conversation happening in the room next door.

“And I am in here talking about beer pong and bar fights,” he scuffed.

“Keep up the fine work and who knows; maybe Hamilton will throw you off the investigation,” she jabbed, adding with a hint of regret, “Then I can have the commissioner send you back to where you’d be more useful.”

It was not a taunt, but it struck a nerve.

“Ma’am I, I think that Simcoe may be in love with your daughter.”

Nancy swallowed a laugh, “That’s all you got out of him?”

“No I-”

“Of course he is in love with my daughter; everyone is in love with my daughter. Hell kid, you would be too after ten minutes with her,” she teased, boxing at his crossed arms.

“I find that very unlikely for a variety of reasons,” Ben replied, trying not to smile.

“Everyone, Tallmadge, apples and trees, after all,” she winked. “Now, want to come with me down to interrogation and watch as I rip this bastard’s balls off?”

He very much did.

 

* * *

 

America’s founding myth was a lie, Simcoe thought. He had not learned much about the Revolution at school but this was clearly not a formerly Anglican people. America could not possibly have been a colony of the British Empire for her citizens had absolutely no understanding of cricket - the defining characteristic of former English oppression.

He had tried to explain the sport once to Akinbode when he had had a few of the lads over to watch The Ashes only to be met with boredom and confusion. Simcoe could empathize with the glazed over look in his friend’s eyes, which alternated for a short while between him and the screen. Eventually, Akinbode said he was going to get a beer from the kitchen, asking if anyone else wanted anything. Simcoe had said the same thing to Andre when he had brought him -along with two nameless strumpets- to Yankee Stadium a year prior. His hopes of escape had been dashed when one of the young woman on Andre’s arm informed him that –as with hot dogs and popcorn- beer had feet and a booming voice at American sporting events. Simcoe had been kind by comparison. He let his friend go and did not explain the game further when he returned.

There were some finer points of sophistication the yanks would never truly understand. Simcoe felt confident that he could now add lad culture to a list that included real sport and proper spelling. He was growing weary of defending - first to Inspector Leggings, now to Dr Eyebrows- that drunken brawls occasionally broke out without cause or consequence. There were only so many ways of explaining this simple fact to people with no basis of comprehension. Americans tried to force meaning into everything. He had had enough. It was really too bad _DeJong’s_ would be closed for the foreseeable future. He wondered who was playing at the weekend and if a row would ensue that might give credence to his claim. Americans, rather than Brits, ought to make more of an effort to integrate themselves within public houses. Especially if they wanted to go on pretending they had been a colony at one point in their short history.

He made a final effort to clarify these points to the doctor with a name he had heard somewhere before but could not place. Dandridge suggested traumatic bonding not at all subtly in response.

“Stockholm Syndrome, you mean? That’s … new.”

He would have to tell Andre about this episode later. The shite would probably be jealous that he did not come on it himself, much as he loved telling him to avoid Hewlett off the pitch. Simcoe was aware that he was smiling awkwardly as he envisioned Andre’s light, casual grin warping with envy as he tried to stay calm. It was truly the stuff of tragedy that he had chosen this day -of all days- to check himself into rehab. Simcoe hoped Andre would not learn any breathing exercises or twelve-step barmy involving a higher power whilst there, for what little remained of their friendship would surely disintegrate. Andre was at his best when his façade was broken, when a slight gesture or a small quip visibly unnerved him and revealed him for the imposter he was. Akinbode was of the opinion that he would simply become slightly better at hiding the bottle for a short while until everyone was on the verge of giving up on him again. Not even therapists believed in therapy it seemed. Simcoe snorted back a bitter chuckle.

“Is that amusing to you, Mr. Simcoe?”

“Most people who know us two consider me the abuser.”

“You clearly don’t.” When he did not respond, she continued, “Did you ever consider it could be the other way around?”

With Andre, this conversation could have been amusing, even fun. Dandridge unnerved him. She listened before she spoke, a talent scarce in individuals, singular among those who had chosen to study social sciences. She followed his eyes as they moved about the room. She was fake-attentive, Simcoe concluded. She was fake-attentive the same way Andre was fake-sophisticated and Hewlett was fake-nice. After all, if she were paying attention, she would have come away from their little chat about a night he hardly remembered with the understanding that the brawl was empty as most were. If she were a real doctor, she would tell him where to look, when to stop staring, and compliment him on now being very good at both of these tasks.

“Mr. Simcoe?”

“Hewlett’s weak,” he replied, hoping to end it there.

“And yet you bow to him.”

“I don’t.”

“Really? Yet here you sit.” An eyebrow raised, “You say you were at school together? Tell me about that.”

“I see no point in discussing it.”

Dandridge looked down at the yellow legal pad she had yet to write on. Simcoe waited for her to press, if only to demonstrate his resistance. He had nothing to say.

Evidently, neither did she.

“Cello? Guitar? Violin perhaps?” she asked after allowing a few minutes to pass in uncomfortable silence.

“Pardon?”

“My grandson,” she clarified, “fifth grade. He is taking strings as an elective.”

“I don’t play an instrument.”

“My tip? Next time someone asks, pretend you do. He is always doing that with his fingers, tip-tap, tip-tap, rapid successions. Training them to move faster. Yours are already quite fast though. Tell me, how long have you had a nervous tick?”

“I don’t,” Simcoe placed his hands on his knees where they would be less distracting. He glanced at Constable Sanchez who had yet to speak as though she might be able to collaborate his assertion. Sanchez raised her shoulders slightly and released them. Simcoe shut his eyes. He had nothing to say. He spoke.

“My father was killed in a roadside bombing when I was ten. The day I turned ten, actually. It might have been after that, after waking up in hospital. My mum killed herself a few months later. Maybe then. So around eighteen years either way. Maybe. I never notice it until everyone else has. So maybe it started before. Or later.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, about your parents,” Sanchez said as per the societal script Simcoe had had no hand in writing.

“It was a long time ago,” he replied.

“Eighteen years,” Dandridge concurred. No _‘but still’_ followed.

Suddenly, subconsciously, Simcoe rather liked her. Throughout the course on her inquiry, her tone had not changed. Cordial, relaxed. Detached yet attentive. She had no understanding of sport or pubs and the fights that break out in them but he could not well fault her for her nation’s defects. Not when she was capable of acknowledge the passage of time without adding an unnecessary value statement.

“With regard to Hewlett and I being at school together,” he offered in return for the advice she had given, “it was only a year, he was leaving as I was coming in. I know his younger siblings better. Well, knew. I suppose I know Edmund better now. I meant only to say that we were in the same year, the twins and I. Edmund didn’t take much notice of me when he still had everything. It’s funny, when we first met I was the one who could barely speak and now he is the one with a stutter. Or maybe he always tripped over his words. I don’t know. Like I said, he never really spoke to me.”

“Define _still had everything_.”

“I can’t,” he was not lying. He did not know why he had phrased it that way. Hewlett had everything Simcoe himself had ever hoped for and refused to see it. He felt himself seething. It was not that Hewlett had taken the woman Simcoe had long envisioned spending his life with so backhandedly, nor was it that he had been so callous and cavalier in doing so. Simcoe could live with this, if he could imagine Anna being happy as Hewlett’s bride. In time, he might have otherwise convinced himself that he was happy for them both, but this was not to pass. Hewlett did not love Anna - not as she deserved- and the little bastard had had the nerve to admit as much before moving her into his humble quarters.

Hewlett had everything, but nothing had meaning for him. Not even the woman whose fire and passion had no contender. He strung her along in a naked display of arrogance. His vanity was perverse. He was cruel. Simcoe had long known this to be true. When it came to Anna, Hewlett’s behaviour abhorred him, yet he could not deny his general admiration for the audacity of it all. It would be over soon enough.

“What do you mean, Mr. Simcoe?” Dandridge pried.

Simcoe would not have Anna’s name brought into this. He could save her from her suffering without inviting Dandridge to begin another discussion about toxic bonding or whatever bollocks term she felt might threaten his sense of security.

“I can’t. Because its tosh ‘innit?” he answered. “But it is how Oyster sees it and how were all meant to. He had a massive stroke when he was twenty, which is sad, I will give him that, but he’s set on making it tragic - and he can’t, can he? He went through all kinds of physical therapy to reanimate himself and to my mind, he is better off for it. Do you have any idea how rare it is to find a two – footed player?”

The constable nodded. The profiler invited him to continue.

“Enlighten me.”

“Right, so, as with your hands, one side is usually prominent. Most people are right handed, some left, and a select few are ambidextrous. It works the same way with feet. What I am saying is, his only tragedy is that he hasn’t any ball intelligence. That is more of a metaphor. Its fucked up, all,” he said, adding less dismissively in a slightly elevated pitch, “He’s only himself to blame.”

“So you play soccer together then?” For the first time Martha Dandridge seemed nonplussed. Americans, Simcoe thought. Americans understood nothing of sport and you could not explain it to them.

“In the same club. I hold the captaincy,” he doubted this would mean anything to her, but he could not resist the opportunity to boast. “Third in the league table; we were first, mind, until Akinbode made the mistake of verifying our existence, but it is no matter. There is still three months left in the season and we’ve a new left-wing who is absolutely phenomenal.”

“You have a soccer team … yet you never play?”

“It is difficult to gather the entire squad together. Sunday league, of course. Most of the players – sorry, why are you writing this down?”

“I’ve a friend with a keen interest in soccer; it would be nice to have a few talking points. Please, continue.”

“I don’t know that this would be on any particular interest to anyone, but to carry on, most of the players have high stress jobs and can’t always make it out to the field. Rogers, our keeper,” he paused, “the chap who stands in between the goal posts -” Dandridge nodded. “Rogers came up with a rather clever joke-name to trick our opponents into thinking no match had been scheduled.”

“By-Week?”

“Oh! Quite perceptive,” he commended.

“The players on this team, are you all English?”

“No, though many of us are so lucky. Akinbode is American though, and Robeson, Strong too. Rogers and Hewlett are both Haggistani -”

“What?”

“Scotsmen.”

“Is the team part of a cultural society?” her pen sild back and forth across the paper as hurried as her questions. It was odd. Beyond Akinbode, no one seemed interested in the dynamics of the squad. He had half a mind to ask her if she had an opinion on who could replace Andre in midfield, as he would be out for the rest on the season.

“What, like the Italians have out in Belmont? No. Well, it is funny that you mention it -”

“I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say that you are all graduates of elite universities.”

“Are we famous?”

“In some circles.”

Simcoe wondered why this sounded like a threat.

“I’ve always assumed the guy who founded the club wanted to be its star player. We’re not generally known for athletic prowess as compared with state schools. But – Sorry. How did you know?”

“I didn’t. You told me,” her pace slowed and she dropped her pen. “Mr. Simcoe, what happened at school?”

“I read econ at Cambridge. Hated every moment of it so I doubled down and finished early.”

“I should have clarified. Boarding school.”

“Nothing significant.”

“In seven years?”

“Nine. I was held back twice. Linguistics and -” he stopped.

“Let me rephrase. What happened between you and Mr. Hewlett when you were at school?” she tapped her gel-filled nails against the desk laud enough for him to take note. A challenge, or reminder, or both.

“Can we suffice it to say that he made less of an effort to conceal his character?”

“If you wish,” she paused, “Mr. Simcoe, do you care to tell me what your motivations are for being here?”

“I have repeatedly.”

“Do you want to try being honest?”

“It won’t alter my response.”

“I’ll tell you what I think, Mr. Simcoe. I think you’re trying to rationalize the actions of a man you have every reason to hate based on an off-putting idea of, forgive me, would you call it nationalism? From where I sit, the suspect has a history of violence – specifically of engaging in banal bar fights, even more specifically, in the very same bar where the alleged victim was last seen. Why are you defending this? Ought I to have a look at your own record?”

Simcoe realized he had made an error in judgement. He sought to lead the conversation astray, in hopes she would get lost and be unable to find her way back to the talking points she pressed in vain.

“Have you ever lived abroad, Ma’am?”

“I’ve had contracts in Kabul, Baghdad and Gitmo.”

“Sahir.”

“Jiddan,” she replied, not looking surprised.

“I can’t see what is not to understand then. When you are living far from home, even when you speak the local language, you don’t understand anything. Not at first.”

“That’s not been my experience.”

He elaborated his. “Everything you say, everything you do is completely misinterpreted. It is draining, isolating, you begin to see yourself through the eyes of the people who have taken pains to tell you that you don’t belong. So you seek out the familiar. I find it highly unlikely that I’d be friends with Hewlett -or half the others for that matter - if we were all back in the United Kingdom, but were here; we can laugh about the same things.”

“Such as aggravated assault?” she challenged.

“Not only. I won’t deny it, sometimes I ask myself why friends with these people. But then something stupid happens, and I’m at a police station having to explain that lads fight sometimes - as if that were some sort of novel concept- while two locals stare me down as if I were trying to pull the wool over them. I’m not. No one is. You’re just asking too much from your imports. I could call any of my British friends and have a proper laugh over it. An American, by contrast, asks in horror how I could stick up for a man who quote _stabbed_ me, and to them I say: do you honestly think that anyone who knows how to wrap a toga in this day and age could inflict physical harm?”

Sanchez held back a laugh. Dandridge waited until she was certain he had finished and offered an understanding smile although it was clear to Simcoe that she understood nothing at all.

“You want him to see you the way you see him. You respect him because he refuses to. That is why you came. Think on it.”

“Maybe. I’m disappointed with him more than anything else,” he confessed. “If he had stabbed me as the report claims I could be dead and I would have been spared from this rather frivolous interview.”

“You’re free to go,” she replied flippantly. “You just don’t want to until you’ve had the opportunity to lie about your ear.”

“You’re not going to ask me?”

“No. Why should I? I can’t expect you to be honest with me when you refuse to be honest with yourself.”

“I’ve spoken honestly about everything.”

“Tell me about school.”

He had nothing to say. He spoke.

“Do you want to know what sort of man Hewlett is? I’ll tell you this; when I was sixteen I went into the commons during the winter holidays and saw his younger sister there. I asked her if she wasn’t going skiing in Switzerland or whatever it was that children with parents they rarely see did over Christmas. No, she said. Said they were staying at the estate that year and that she wasn’t going home because it made her upset. Said she didn’t want to talk about it but went on to tell me that her older brother was living there again, that he was nocturnal and half dead and it depressed her too much. Said she didn’t want to sit at the dinner table and watch everyone else pretend that Edmund didn’t go into the stables one morning and shoot his favourite horse clear through its head. I don’t remember why Ellie told me. I think she wanted me to buy her beer. That is the way they all are, family Hewlett, ones I’ve met anyway. Open if it serves a means to an end. You learn to deal with it if your options are limited. I fucked her, by the way. Ellie. That Christmas. Or she fucked me, I don’t know anymore. That is what the fight was about. The one where I was stabbed. Told him – Edmund – that I gave her riding lessons after he went and killed some dumb animal. He didn’t defend or deny it. Just set him off – do you want to see?”

Simcoe unbuttoned his shirt midway to reveal a small scar between his un-waxed pecs. Sanchez made a cheeky remark on his hair colour. He nodded slightly, embarrassed by her eyes.

“That is at least a little worse than you made it out to be,” Dandridge commented on the scar.

“It’s not serious. He was lain up for a few days afterward with hypothermia. Half of Setauket saw him bare. We’re even,” Simcoe asserted.

“Do you think it deserved?”

“Friends fight. Some more famously than others.”

“My friends and I only stab each other in a figurative sense.”

“We do that too. Stab is excessive though -at least- physically speaking.”

“Let’s talk about it figuratively then. Tell me about Anna Strong.”

 

* * *

 

He would tell the world how he thought of her one day. Anna Strong was exceptional. She was at once both fire and ice, charming him with her smile whilst she avoided his advances. She was, and would ever remain, untarnished; regardless of the suffering she seemed keen to beset herself with.

When his absent mind was allowed to wander, it always ran back to her. He catalogued each interaction, every glimpse he caught from afar. With the sound of her name he could feel her fingertips brushing against him, knowing that they we playing a game. Simcoe would never win. He was satisfied with surrender. Anna was all-conquering, he was hers from the moment her first stepped into the tavern.

He questioned when he had last allowed himself to have sex with his eyes open. Flesh ceased to have the same allure. For a time he sought to find amusement in women who shared her physical traits but he found there was ultimately no resemblance. Anna was everything, but nothing was Anna. Not his hand, not some toy, and not some fair-skinned brunette he had found at another bar. John Graves Simcoe hardly slept and never blinked, but when he kissed his eyes hid; partially to aid his fanaticises, partially to shield him from shame. He was not betraying her, she was never his, but he was hers, even when he whispered poems he had penned for her in the ears of another.

A number of things had occurred since the turn of the year that made him wish the knife he took in the fall had found his heart. Anna had come to his flat after clubbing with her girlfriends in the city, drunken, desperate, and barefoot on a winter’s night carrying six-inch heels. She offered herself when he offered her socks, an aspirin and his bed to sleep in. It did nothing to sully his opinion of her - for nothing could - but the sun had not shone as brightly since. The world was darker with the knowledge that lesser men had given her the impression that she was worth so little. It was darker still when he recognized that had she been a lesser woman he might have taken what she presented without further thought.

They dated for a few weeks. Dated, only in the sense that she invited him around more often. She allowed him to kiss her, but met his lips with a hesitance he did not expect. When he tried to tell her how he felt she replied that she was not ready for a relationship.

A month later she was divorced. Give it a few weeks, he told himself when Akinbode mentioned off hand that she had been given a court date. He remembered her smiling and laughing after her first match with the team. He remembered her warm and willing embrace after he scored on her assist. Give it a few weeks, he told himself, she loves you, she will soon realize it.

Soon came and went without Anna noticing. When he arrived back at the tavern for a toast she was effectively engaged to one of his closest friends. Once more, the world was darker with the knowledge that lesser men had given her the impression that she was worth so little. For all of his manners and niceties, Edmund Hewlett was as much of a bastard as John Graves Simcoe had ever imagined him being.

_Forgive me_ , Hewlett would later ask. Simcoe simply could not. By the time Hewlett had gotten around to offering apologetic sentiment without actually apologising or admitting to any foul play, Anna had told him that she was in love. With Hewlett. The figurative knife twisted.

In spite of all the scars the stargazer was set on inflicting with wonton disregard, Simcoe liked to think that he was capable of accepting his beloved’s wishes. He swore that her happiness was paramount, and for a time it seemed that Hewlett was offering an olive branch by way of echoing this sentiment.

Simcoe was satisfied within reason, until an offhand comment was made while they were settling the check that afternoon.

“Why sign it over?” Akinbode asked after Hewlett finished explaining his plan to purchase _DeJong Tavern_. “If you own a legitimate business with people in your employ you can legally reside in the United States. Many of my clients do this. Set up a repayment plan with Anna and when her debts are settled you can put it into her name. That way you won’t have to marry.”

“Oh thank God!” Hewlett exclaimed at this revelation.

Simcoe remained silent; hoping that the deity Hewlett sought to praise would strike him down for his insolence.

“And here even I was starting to believe in the myth of Anna and Edmund,” Akinbode shook his head. “Look we have more than our share of problems but Anna and I’ve been friends for over ten years, can you maybe -”

“No, no, ah – I believe there has been a misunderstanding -” Hewlett started. Simcoe noticed Akinbode idiosyncratically looking at his watch. It would have amused him if he thought the speech impediment to be symptomatic of anything other than a bold-faced lie. In the next two-minutes, thirty-six seconds, Hewlett chocked out that he really was in love with Anna Strong; at least he thought he was. On these shifting grounds, he did not wish to marry. Not, at any rate, under his current circumstances. There was an admitted logic to it. He loved her and thus did not want to force her to take his hand for any reason other than mutual sentiment. No, Simcoe thought, you love only yourself.

When they were walking back to the police station that Simcoe might give his statement and Akinbode might pick up his car, Simcoe broke up a conversation about Anna having hidden her bar results to offer Hewlett a proposition.

“Do you want to make this interesting?”

His plan was such. He would move some assets around and purchase _DeJong Tavern_. If Hewlett were as confident as he claimed in his insider information, at the end of a twelve-week period the business and the remaining funds would be his, on the condition that he did not marry Anna Strong. If his trades failed to raise half a million, Simcoe would sign the business over to Anna anyway on the condition that Hewlett never mention his involvement.

Hewlett’s lips twisted into a wide and wicked grin. Simcoe hated him more than ever.

Ironically, it was this very characteristic that made Simcoe covet Hewlett’s friendship to begin with. He was not unhappy to see it resurface. In addition to providing much wanted vindication, it served to send Anna into his arms where she was truly wanted. Everything would be right, or, everything would better resemble his own idolized world. He and Hewlett were better off when their standing rivalry turned bitter. _“Toxic”_ Andre called it, _“real recognizing real”_ Akinbode said, _“gay as fuck,”_ the somewhat self-loathing Joyce had remarked. Joyce was not entirely wrong in this assessment, but as with every shot Simcoe had ever watched him take in their association matches, he was not exactly on target either.

Simcoe had always presumed Hewlett was slightly bent; a suspicion that his apparent lack of real interest in the fiery, passionate Anna did nothing to quell. They had kissed once before, or maybe it was several times within the same evening, Simcoe could not recall and it was not significant. The emptiness it left in him was easily filled with alcohol and argument as manifestations of loneliness often were. He did not remember the kiss itself, beyond the fact that it was he who had initiated it after _The Three Lions_ had beaten _Les Blues_ 2-0 back in November. He was afterwards satisfied that he knew enough about his own sexuality in that he remembered the result of a friendly more than the small act of deviance it had inspired. Nonetheless, he found himself thinking about it more and more since that snake had slithered into his garden.

If all of his dreams of Anna should fall apart, Simcoe reasoned, he would probably end up settling down with a woman not unlike Hewlett in character; fickle, cold, someone who used sex like a weapon and feigned a headache or whatever strange ailment Oyster claimed to suffer when one tried to otherwise initiate it. She would likely clothe herself in luxuries bought from money she’d not herself earned, talk far too much or not at all, and never quite make sense regardless of what was uttered. She would probably be borderline; and, with any luck, she would show signs of it before things got so far with them that he would inevitably blame himself for a condition over which neither had any control. Everyone at his firm seemed to have such a wife waiting in faraway homes they rarely frequented.

He wondered if Mary Woodhull was such a woman. He wondered why he was thinking about Mary Woodhull as a romantic possibility given what she had done to his ear and neck, given that Anna was as good as his. He wondered if his mother had also been such a woman, and, more light heartedly, when John Andre would check himself out of rehab so he could pose this very question to him. It would be more fun, of course, if Andre were to be drinking and having a gay of himself time prior to Simcoe’s intrusion. That would serve to sober him. Regardless, it was something else to look forward to.

Then again, Anna would surely be his by the next time he met his former shrink, and Simcoe would surely have ceased speaking of anything besides the virtues of true love. Doubt be damned.

 

* * *

 

“About Anna? Nothing to tell” the nature of the moment forced him to reply. “We went on a few dates, a couple of months back. Never slept together. I suppose you are going to suggest that I am in love with Hewlett as well?”

“No. You are obsessed. I think it not hard to imagine this occasionally manifesting itself affectionately, though most of your interactions are marked by disdain. It is not love. I imagine it is the same way with Miss Strong.”

Simcoe opened his mouth to reply.

“Now, now. Before you protest. You want to beat him. Am I wrong? Not only that, you want him to look you in the eye and tell you that you’ve won. That he had suffered a crushing defeat at your hands. I’m going to give you some advice, and I don’t mean this to be cruel, but you need to let go. For your own sake. Mr. Hewlett is never going to submit, not to you. Even if he were to, would the victory have any real value? No. He has already lost. You know that. You torture yourself with the knowledge that the only person to ever defeat Edmund Hewlett was Edmund Hewlett himself. Once by his own body rebelling against him and once by his own hand as you were forced to sit on the side-lines and watch. It must have been hell. From what you’ve explained, he’s a narcissist, Mr. Simcoe, and so too are you.” Her suddenly hard tone offered little room for contradiction. Simcoe was forced into defence.

“I didn’t say anything -”

“I’ve been in this profession a long time. Do you think yourselves unique? A colleague of mine, former colleague rather, has this burnt out rivalry he can’t release. Maybe it is born of expat solidarity as you suggest, more likely because it has proven a constant and they are both individually terrified of losing that aspect of their self-understanding. Take heed; do not look to others and hope to find yourself in them, Mr. Simcoe. You’ll be universally disappointed.”

“How did you -”

“I have tenure at Columbia. I know who Edmund Hewlett is and what he attempted. I know John Andre, Robert Rogers, Jordan Akinbode and yes, Anna Strong as well. Her mother and I do yoga together,” she chimed. “Small world, isn’t it?”

Simcoe felt like he was choking.

“So, Mr. Simcoe, let’s talk about what happened to your ear.”

“Are we done then?”

“We will see one another soon I’m sure,” she stated calmly as she motioned towards the door.

 

* * *

 

Hewlett could stay in America without marrying Anna Strong. Every way he read the projections, they indicated such. It was better this way. Simcoe could not sleep at night and Hewlett did not. A five-hour time difference would unbalance their routine. He want Hewlett to leave defeated without actually leaving, _because your rivalry has proven a constant and you are both individually terrified of losing that aspect of your self-understanding_ he heard himself thinking in the slight southern drawl of Dr Dandridge. Bollocks! Even Andre would agree it was a poor assessment, but then of course he would, he had formed a _toxic bond_ himself somewhere along the way, had he not?

Simcoe hated that he remembered the term she had used. He hated the he identified with what she had said and he hated that he had gone to give a statement at all. He ought to have let Oyster clean up his own mess. Except that the mess was not Hewlett’s. It was his own mess. His and Mary Woodhull’s. And mess was her word for it.

Simcoe played with the gauze on his left ear until he aggravated it gaging how wealthy he could reasonably expect to make his rival and a choice few other accounts under his management if everything else should go wrong in the world. The higher the digits grew, the worse he felt. He had beaten a man, possibly to death, and the worst people he had ever met or read about would profit from it. He included himself in that sentiment. Pulling up Anna’s Facebook page and clicking through a slide show of old albums, yet another word the profiler used re-entered and repeated in his mind. _Obsession._ No, the thought. She was wrong. This was love. He gazed at the Anna on his screen. This, he said to himself of her smile, was exactly the way she would look at him when she owned the bar she was standing behind in a solid half of the thousands of selfies she had posted.

_Obsession._

The word hit him again when he noticed that two figures were staple in Anna’s backgrounds. He glanced at his phone to see if the argument he had felt comfortable laughing about earlier had ceased. It had not. Simcoe did what seemed logical, without considering that in doing so he was proving the very point that gave him umbrage.

Hewlett answered on the first ring.

Before he could offer a greeting, Simcoe spoke, “What the fuck have you done, bring money into this? Are you mad or just stupid?”

“Fuck Simcoe, what did you say?”

It occurred to him that given the questionable legality of their business dealings, he had perhaps misspoke. He smiled to himself for a minute as he listened to what sounded like Hewlett hyperventilating in a very public place. Realizing this may not play out well for him personally, Simcoe offered a correction, “Nothing, nothing to that extent anyway. I was with a criminal profiler for the FBI.”

“Again, that begs the question-”

“I realized something dreadful. You’re my best friend.”

“Well, that is depressing. My condolences,” Hewlett replied dryly.

“Much appreciated,” Simcoe responded with matched acid. “I always thought though, I might settle for someone like you someday, just not like _this_. No matter.”

“Like _what_ exactly?”

Simcoe clicked through a few more old photographs. As delicately as he found possible, he asked, “Do you think it possible that we’re slowly turning into a modern version of Andre and Rogers?”

“I hope they didn’t make you take a piss test,” Hewlett scoffed. Simcoe ignored him.

“What if were still carrying on like this ten years from now, except all of the girls and goddesses we’ve known have left us, our professional and academic interests have been exhausted and all we’ve been left with is football rivalries and unpaid debts and bar tabs?”

It was an honest question. Hewlett seemed to take some time in considering his answer. As was his custom, the answer he started with too many pauses and modifiers for Simcoe’s preference.

“Ah … that, that will never happen for a variety of reasons, you see, not the least of which is the fact that QPR has a long-”

“No, no. You’ve already made money an element of our understanding this and I’d appreciate if you would leave my Rangers out. For now anyway. Let’s strive to keep it interesting.”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

Not when it came to Anna. Never with her. He had already made a few calls about the property. Simcoe was keen to make her dreams come true, but he was also keen to profit at Hewlett’s expense. He would take the half million as his fee and purchase the place for a fifth of what was being asked. It would not matter. Not to Hewlett. So long as he was on top, Hewlett did not care about anything or anyone else, not even the woman whom they both claimed to love. The woman he put a price on as though she were a simple accessory to a life her felt himself entitled to. Simcoe questioned if Hewlett was aware of his moral and civil deficits or if he was as fooled by his delicate mannerisms as those whose favour he courted.

Why did he so seldom find himself on the receiving end of Hewlett’s good graces? He did more for that man than anyone else would even conceive of doing. Even his quest to win Anna was a kindness. Hewlett craved misery to the point that he would create it if need be. His suicide, his frivolous spending that brought him close to the poverty line – to Simcoe’s mind, these did not even have the decency to be cries for attention. Hewlett was simply born wistful and ached for that which might excuse him.

“Of course not. Not about _that_. I’m loath to admit it but I’ve been looking at projections and you really are a genius. I plan on riding these gains back to London.”

“London?” he asked, suddenly tense.

“I’ve a meeting with the director of HR next month to discuss a promotion.”

“Well done, I’d offer to join you for a celebratory drink but that sounds rather like it feeds into this self-fulfilling prophecy of yours. How did you come on it?”

Simcoe looked at yet another old picture of the gorgeous girl who had come between them. Yet again, it was sullied by the figures fighting in the corner. Philomena was with them this time. It must have been taken before she was famous, when she could still go out to any old place and have a drink or two. She seemed happier as a plebeian than she ever had as a thespian. Simcoe wondered when the picture had been taken. Philomena Cheer had been a trending topic on Twitter and Tumblr since his second stint in Chelsea. Two-thousand-ten he read in the notes. He clicked through a few more pictures of collegiate Anna until he landed on one of her in front of a pile of boxes with her arms around Mary Woodhull, huge smiles on both of their faces.

Simcoe remember the story Mary told him about how their friendship ended. Abraham had slept with them both within a few weeks of each other. Hate though he did to give the weasel the benefit of doubt, it did not sound malicious. It sounded like what lads did in their early twenties. He wondered if Abe knew that Mary and Anna were even acquainted. He wondered, using their history as a model, if his fake affair with the former would ruin his final chance with the later; and if Mary wanted it to.

“Pains me as it does to say it, I could really stand to be drunk at three in the afternoon these days,” he responded, half in reference to what Delphi portended.

“Agreed.”

“Did you meet Martha Dandridge – the FBI profiler?”

“Ah – no. I simply sat in interrogation for hours waiting for … Tallies, I believe - it is possible I am mistaken, I am simply dreadful with names.”

“Tallmadge,” Simcoe corrected. “You are a narcissist, by the way.”

“What are you on about?” Hewlett protested, growing annoyed. “Did you explain that it was just a row or not?”

“I tried to. They trick you. You wanted to remain a suspect, did you not?”

“I suppose.”

“Well!”

“You never can keep the beast in chains, can you?”

“Heavy accusations coming from someone who allegedly killed a man.”

“ _Who killed a man_? Moi? You can’t honestly believe that about me. Why, only a demon would be capable of such an act against man and God. To that end for all I know you’re involved.”

Simcoe went silent. His eyes focused on the redhead on his screen. He felt the steal in her soft lips. He felt guilty. Mary Woodhull was smart, quick and decisive. She deserved more than to be stuck in a loveless marriage with a musician waiting for his big break. He deserved more than to play an instrumental role in their break-up, if that was Mary’s design as he strongly suspected it might be. He deserved the chance to make Anna as happy as she had been before circumstance had placed them all in their current predicaments.

Circumstance, which included having murdered a man with Mary. He questioned if Hewlett would be so cold as to joke in such fashion if he truly suspected Simcoe. Or rather, would the same inkling lead him to take the fall as he had volunteered to do? If it could be viewed as an act of love on Hewlett’s side, it spoke only of suffering and self.

“Simcoe?”

He wondered how long he had left the line.

“You’re delusional.”

“I confess - you almost had me for a moment.”

“It was good wasn’t it?”

“Ah, yes, quite,” he sounded relieved.

“Do you think I could kill?” Simcoe inquired with hesitance.

“Christ.”

“Do you?”

“I won’t lie and say I haven’t considered it, but no. Certainly not a public figure. Maybe it is an expression of my arrogance, but I’d like to think if you were going to up and off someone, it would be me.”

“It would, without question,” he smiled.

“Well, that’s always lovely to hear. Heaven knows I needed that kind of reassurance.”

“Glad to be of service.”

“If that was all, I ought to return to making an absolute ass of myself elsewhere -”

Something was wrong. Simcoe was loath to ask.

“Wait. Amused as I am at what has befallen you, I wish you didn’t let yourself suffer.”

“Oh, let’s not do this. I need to get used to not smoking first.”

“Your right, quite insensitive.”

“Right caged animal you are.”

“Is that truly your assessment of me? Oyster, tell me, are we friends simply on the basis that we’re both English?”

“Because were English? You’re a damn Paki and we’re barley friends at all. Simcoe … get some rest.”

“Mujhae akela chore do, Oyster,” he spat back in Urdu.

"Ah - Ceart gu leòr," Hewlett replied mockingly in Scots Gaelic. Maybe that was it. Maybe he had let it creep into his understanding as well.

“Why did I even mention my fears knowing as I do your inability to let things go?”

“You want some kind of assurance that a woman you spoke to once made a false diagnosis – alright. You and I, were not base. We do not discuss money outside of a business setting or get drunk in public during daylight hours. We’ve ancestry. America won’t extinguish that in the short time that we have remaining.”

“My, my. Such snobbery! Such blatant classism! Did anyone ever tell you that you’d be among the first they would drag off to the guillotine if this were the French Revolution?”

“Yes, as that is such a clear point of reference. Apropos – are you at your computer?”

“I am.”

“I have to send you something that may cheer you up. Hold on.”

“What is it?”

“Before waking up this morning I thought it was going to be the worst thing I’d encounter all week.”

“That sounds promising”

“It is historical fiction about the American Revolution, written by our own Abigail.”

Simcoe chuckled.

“Don’t laugh quite yet; you are a character in it too.”

“Too?”

“Why yes, I’m the incompetent Major; you’re my insane Captain.”

This was growing vaguely offensive.

“In what world would you outrank me?”

“In a colonial melodrama, evidently.”

“Did I ever tell you my theory about how America was never in her history a British colony?”

“Go on then.”

“Its cricket-”

“Cricket? Honestly Simcoe, did you ring just to make a nuisance of yourself?”

“Could well be, though I hoped for your honest take on what seems is an increasingly bitter rivalry.”

“I believe the fact you called to ask provides your answer. You’ve never given a damn about mine.”

“You see? We’d ought to make some life changes, methinks.”

“Like what, drinking less?” Hewlett laughed.

“Blood hell! I talk of improving my life not effectively ending it.”

“Want to go for a beer now, then? I’m still in the city, will be for a while. Some block offed himself at Huntington. Again.”

“Where is your car?”

“Back at the tavern I assume. They wouldn’t let me drive it to police headquarters somehow.”

“Fancy that,” he piped, mirroring the sarcasim.

“Beer?”

Simcoe clicked through a few more photographs of long forgotten better days before closing the tab and facing his spreadsheets once more. He could work from anywhere but needed to put some face time in at the office. He needed to give the firm a physical embodiment of his dedication, especially went promotion was being whispered.

“Love to, but I’ve to crack this before going hiking tonight.”

“Ah, that’s why you’re dressed like that and have been so off-tempered all day.”

“What do you mean?”

“The denim.”

“About my temperament?”

“Hiking, mate. The woods unravel you. I assume I’m Rogers in your dystopian future and only half because you whore around with married women.”

_Ah!_ Simcoe thought mockingly. There was the judgement he had been awaiting. He wondered if Hewlett would have been so candid about the price he put on Anna if he had not seen him marked from the advances of another woman. Perhaps the artificial affair played into his pocket after all.

“You can sod off, you know that? It is not as if you are a frontiersman.”

“Yes, yes, but be that as it may, you are comically useless outdoors. Do you remember when we had practice and you kicked the ball into the shrubs and it took you an entire two hours to find it – eventually gave up and tried to run to Dick’s to buy a replacement?”

“I did no such -”

“Just take a GPS. Is it a work thing? One of those damned cooperate bonding -”

“It a date I am now sorry to admit.”

“Well that makes one of us.”

“Trouble in paradise?” he squeaked with tempered joy.

“I keep trying to reach her-”

“Don’t think too much on it. That is how women are. Phone in their hand all day and when you text you get no reply – and then later, _oh, sorry love, it was in my purse on vibrate_. Act like you believe them, in the end it is all trivial. As for Anna – if she doesn’t want to talk, she won’t. Learn to live with it or kindly step aside.”

“I do not think you entirely appreciate my predicament. I have not been able to contact her since I left the station. She has me blocked on every social media platform and her phone rings twice and then the line cuts out.”

“Blocked? I have to commend her dedication.”

“Every platform. I might make like the chap before me and leap off this one when the trains start running again.”

“I’ll try to get in touch,” Simcoe said, pulling up Anna’s Facebook page again.

“Thanks.”

“If that be all, I better get back to it. Travel safe -”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“About earlier. I want you to know that I didn’t mean –what I said, how I said it or the way you took it. I want Anna to be happy. That is all I want. Wait no that is also inaccurate, ah, I ought to start over, you see, I would hate. No, I, I just would hate to think of you, and consequently Mary Woodhull -of all people - being hurt in the process. Loath though I am to admit it, I fear you may be my best friend too.”

“That is all rather traumatic. Forgive me for starting out with such lofty overtones.”

“So, are we good?”

“Never,” Simcoe asserted. “We are just better than everyone else as per your own world view.”

 

* * *

 

Mary Woodhull did not feel the tears that were streaming down her porcelain face until they overcame her. She sat sobbing in the shower, drowning in the thoughts of what she had done and what she was resolved to do as a result while thin streams of hot water beat against her back before pooling by the drain.

Abraham was sleeping in their bedroom. He was there; passed out, face down on the bed, still wearing his trainers, when she arrived home from picking their son up from kindergarten. Mary found it to be rather insensitive; for all the days he spent lounging on his father’s couch or distracting their contractor Rogers from finishing the repairs necessary for inspection at the house she had purchased at his urging, that he chose this day to sleep in their bed. Their martial bed. The one that she had in theory and act unmade.

She could still taste John on her lips, smell his sweat and feel the silk of his hair. Even wet, hers felt like straw by comparison. In her mind she heard the soft hum of his high voice, frantic whispers of perverse acts born of fantasy. She wondered what it was about him made her feel so dangerous, deviant; if it was their short shared history, the awkward phallus she felt pressed up against the thin fabric of her skirt, or the simple fact that his heart belonged to the woman whom she imagined still danced through her husband’s dreams.

John had not wanted to kiss her. He had not so much as wanted to look at her as she left him with little reminders of the night they shared. It angered her to the point that she had drawn blood and it angered her more that she felt incapable of admonishing herself for it. She did not love him, though, she reasoned, she deserved a love like his. A love that only the Anna Smiths of the world seemed to inspire.

When the water or the air around her began to chill, Mary rose and washed herself quickly. As soon as she turned the faucet off she could hear Abe’s heavy snores. She hated the sound; she envied it more. Mary did not want to risk waking her husband. She did not want to explain what she was doing at home in the middle of the workday. Abe would have offered no explanation, and Mary did not know whether the truth or the lie she had established to cover it would damn her marriage more. She did not know if the conflicting narratives of her affair with a lonesome and loathsome Englishman and the man they had murdered existed separately or as one. John was too present in her thoughts. She wondered if she even existed for him.

Wrapped only in a bathrobe, Mary tiptoed across the hall. She pressed her ear against Hewlett’s locked door. Hearing nothing, she opened the door to the hall bathroom, which he rather stupidly never thought to secure. She saw her reflection in the mirrored medicine cabinet; Mary did not just feel like a monster, she was beginning to resemble one as well. Her eyes were still bloodshot; her skin was dry and chalky. Of all of Edmund Hewlett’s effeminate tendencies, face cream was unfortunately not one. Still, she knew he wore contact lenses, and likely had eye drops hidden among his numerous prescriptions. Mary pressed against the left edge of the cabinet to open it. She found what she was really looking for instantly, forgetting her dry eyes and skin at the sight of the bottle of Benzodiazepine.

The déjà vu was not lost on her as she shook two pills into her hand. Had she taken enough to pass out the night before as she had intended, she would have never read Abe’s text, she would have never stolen the keys to Anna’s car and thus have never used it to drive into the senator. She wondered how many she would have to take to forget about last night’s events altogether. She questioned if she wanted to. From the time she had extinguished her last cigarette under the flow of the kitchen skin in her college flat after discovering that she was pregnant, Mary had not felt secure. Five years later, Simcoe offered her one of his smokes, and somehow she felt safe. Protected. Was that feeling worth trying to hold onto? If she reached for it, she knew she risked letting go over everything else she had convinced herself was dear.

Dear, like the Xanax she periodically stole to help her disconnect from it all.

Mary turned on the faucet and cupped her hand beneath it, collecting enough water to swallow two pills and her absence of faith. As she brought her hand to her mouth, the door connecting the guest bathroom to Hewlett’s chamber creaked open. Mary jumped.

“I can explain!” she said in a single breath. Seeing Aberdeen she asked, relieved, “can you?”

“I was just returning Mr. ‘Ewlett’s keys.”

“Oh.”

“And you?”

Mary held out her right hand, exposing her bad habit. “Want one?”

“What is it?”

“A short acting anxiolytic,” Mary said, handing her the bottle for further clarification. “I need to take a long nap.”

“Nah, I am done getting mixed up in these ‘igh-profile shit. No offence but I saw Mr. Pfizer down at the police station and your lot can keep ‘im. I’m out.”

Mary had no idea what Aberdeen was talking about and declined to ask.

“’Ow is Thomas?” For all of her faults the charming Haitian au pair truly did love Mary’s little boy. She looked as if she had been running around the house since returning looking for the little angle who gave them both so much light.

“With his grandfather. I told Richard that school has been cancelled for the rest of the week due to an E. coli outbreak in the cafeteria and now they are at the movies.”

“E. coli. Such culture! Gosh I miss the city,” Aberdeen exclaimed without a hint of irony.

“I know,” Mary sympathised, “me too.”

She looked back down at the pills in her hand. “Aberdeen, at the risk of seeming uncouth, may I sleep in your bed for a few hours? Abe is sleeping in ours and I don’t want to disturb him.”

“You can but uh, I’ve a paper to finish as long as I am off, so I’ll be typing the whole time. Why don’t you just sleep in there?” she offered, pointing to Hewlett’s room behind her.

Mary noted that Aberdeen did not inquire further about her reasons for not wanting to sleep beside her husband. The poor man who deserved nothing from her, especially not this. She swallowed both pills dry.

“Mr. ‘Ewlett was released from police custody about two hours before we met with Ms. District Attorney. I don’t remember what she is really called except that it is not Strong.”

“Smith. Her name is Smith.”

“Oh. Ms. Smith was quite angry at Miss Strong when Mr. ‘Ewlett was arrested but she was just as angry at his release. Miss Strong was angry too, so angry that we ‘ad to drop her off at some gentrified ‘ouse in Brooklyn and I don’t think she is coming back.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“She was quite worried about ‘im, you see. After the police we went to _The Newsroom_ as it was closing and Rob said that Mr. ‘Ewlett had been in for lunch with Jordan and, and … their other friend. The ginger.”

“Simcoe?” Mary’s heart raced. She could feel her face flushing, either from the sound of his name on the lips of someone familiar or Aberdeen’s odd expression as she repeated it slowly. “Anyway, ‘Ewlett was there having a rather gay time, drinking port and eating oysters with ‘is mates while Anna, who ‘ad been so concerned for his welfare that she went to slay ‘er dragon of a mother for ‘im,” Aberdeen was becoming emotional. Her accent grew stronger as her volume raised. Mary knew the feeling. She placed a hand of support on the younger woman’s shoulder. How many times had her own presence been over looked in response to the drama that followed Anna’s name? Poor girl. When this was all over, she would invite Robert Townsend back to Whitehall on Aberdeen’s behalf.

“‘Ee didn’t even ‘ave the curtesy to call and say ‘ee ‘ad been released and she needn’t worry. And ‘ee was on the phone the whole time. They all were. Just not with ‘er. So I don’t think she will come back to Whitehall.”

It was the sort of thing that Abe was constantly doing with Robert Townsend and Caleb Brewster, Mary thought as she found herself cheering for her rival. “Good girl, Anna. Get out while you still can.”

“And as for Mr. ‘Ewlett I don’t think ‘ee is coming back soon either. It was in the news radio that someone jumped the rail so there will be delays.”

“God, I miss the city.”

“I know; me too.”

 

* * *

 

Before she fell asleep, Mary confessed to Aberdeen that she was meeting someone that evening and asked her to wake her at six. She borrowed a pair of Anna’s jeans she found on the floor and a loose, warm, old sweater in which to wander the woods. Tired from the medicine, she stared into Hewlett’s cheval glass, wondering if she looked as pretty in casual chic as Anna seemed to without effort. She braided her long hair. Anna had everything, Mary though, rolling up the bottom of the borrowed skinny jeans. She was tall and fit; a soft face with strong, dark features. Mary felt so pale in her shadow. She always had, even back when they had been friends.

She remembered going out with Anna, flirting with countless handsome men at bars they snuck into with fake IDs bearing the names of fictional characters. Mary spent hours getting ready; Anna, in contrast simply brushed her hair and teeth, throwing on whatever was on the top of the hamper. Yet Anna was always the one who stole the room. Mary was simply the gatekeeper, and like a fool, she had been happy to play that part.

The sweatshirt read >>Columbia<<. Mary wondered if having a child had not forced her to abandon her dreams of law school if she could have ever played Anna’s part.

No, she decided laying down on Hewlett’s hard mattress. Stars were born, not forged. She had married into a world she was not part of. She had married where Anna had fled. Once again, Mary saw herself losing a war Anna likely did not know them to be fighting.

She counted the glowing stickers in the cosmos Hewlett had stuck to his bed’s canopy. She did not reached twenty before falling asleep.

 

* * *

 

Hewlett was solemn and silent when he nudged her back to consciousness.

“Aberdeen, what time is it?” she asked before opening her eyes.

“Oh, Oh. Edmund! Forgive me I-”

Hewlett held up his hand. “It is I that may owe you and apology, Mrs. Woodhull,” he spoke softly.

“Mary.”

“Ah, yes. Mary. Of course.”

“What time is it?” she inquired, still groggy from the stolen pills.

“Ah … quarter past. Five. Five fifteen.”

He started pacing. “Which mean it has been eight hours since my arrest, four since my release, and she still won’t take my calls,” he sighed heavily. “She has be blocked on every social media outlet. Why would I imagine she be in my bed … wearing my sweater at that.”

“This is yours? I thought-”

“We have the same one, but, ah, may I?” Mary leaned forward. “No, -M- it is mine. It is yours now if you want it. What does it matter? I tried to be the man she assumed I was, who whom she implied that she wanted me to be and I ruined everything - Or maybe everything between us was already ruined and it took me getting arrested to see it - Or maybe it was always a one sided affair. I’m a fool. I always have been. Everyone can see it, hell, even I can see it.”

He looked at Mary as though he expected a protest. When she was not forthcoming, he continued.

“I didn’t know anything of your shared history until yesterday. She isn’t coming back. That horror for you is over; and I would ask your pardon for it,” his pace was slow, his voice deep. As always, he was dreadfully boring. She hoped, as she often did, that she would not nod off in the middle of his soliloquy. She figured she would need at least twenty minutes to make her escape, and thirty more to apply the cosmetics she did not want Simcoe to see her without. She fought against her eyelids. Maybe if she closed them he would just disappear. It was a tempting thought.

“Mary, I’ve - I’ve been alone all my life. At times I thought myself happy, because I had no idea what happiness was, and at times I thought myself miserable for all the same reason. Now I doubt that I shall ever smile again.”

Mary had no compassion for Hewlett’s loss. He was a man like any other, arrogant when he felt he could afford to be and atrabilious otherwise. Anna had been wise to abandon the idea of him, regardless of what her reasons were. She fought back the grin she felt creeping onto her face at the realisation that if fortune continued to favour her, she need only hear one side of this break up.

“So, why were you arrested?” she asked, remembering what Aberdeen had said.

“I misspoke in front of a crime scene.”

“What _crime scene?”_ It was the first time she had heard those words.

“Senator Benedict Arnold, a Republican from Pennsylvania, was apparently last seen at _DeJong Tavern_. I’m surprised you’ve not heard about it. Are you feeling quite well?”

“The police are at the tavern where Anna works?” she asked, trying to seem surprised.

“Worked,” Hewlett corrected, stating that everything had gone to hell.

“Oh.”

She saw tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Remembering the way John’s lit up at the very mention of Anna’s name, Mary saw a means of avenging herself against the woman whom the rest of the world assumed had hung the moon. Anna had longer legs, a brighter smile, a far more enticing figure, better breeding and an Ivy League law degree. She made a mockery of Mary, her marriage, and countless other women who swallowed the pill of societal expectations by standing close enough to them that comparison was inevitably drawn. Anna won every conceivable contest with laughing indifference. Edmund Hewlett, weak, weeping Edmund Hewlett was a fitting punishment for the injustice born of her presence.

He sat down beside her. She reached for the hand he was not currently folding his crying eyes into.

“I know that she went to visit her mother to beg for your release. It has been a long time since I’ve known Anna or called her a friend, and I’m not from the world the cast you both out. Still, if you’ll accept some insight, you and Anna, you are idealists. She spent her entire adolescence pretending that money was irrelevant as you spent yours pretending that everything had a price. She’s grown up enough that she sees she needs it, but that it isn’t enough. Not alone. Find her. Fall at her feet before someone else -someone better- beats you to her alter, or to _the_ alter, if you find my meaning.”

“You don’t much like me, Mary, do you?” he correctly surmised.

“Not much. Not right now anyway,” she answered honestly.

“I shouldn’t know this, and forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, but whatever is going on between you and … and Simcoe-” he spoke the surname of her spurious lover as if it were a curse.

“Nothing is going on,” Mary informed him as she released his hand. Who was he to pass judgement?

“He’s smitten. Hurt and well ah, injured, but somehow smitten all the same.”

“He is just a stand in. I have the feeling he always is. I have the feeling I always will be.”

“I can’t believe I’m defending this, but John, he – he doesn’t accept substitutions. For all of his faults he is honest about his emotions and intentions.”

Mary knew all too well. She wondered if Hewlett was trying to punish her for being in his room the same way she was trying to punish Anna for the excitement surrounding her existence. The unspoken solidarity pained her. Neither was willing to admit it aloud, but they had both become far too invested in the promises of artificial affection. If Anna -dear Anna- were otherwise occupied with another, John would respect her pursuit of happiness. Of this, she was certain. _“You’re married,”_ his voice echoed in her memory. He deserved so much more than an empty dream.

“What are you doing in my bed?” Hewlett asked before Mary could consider her feelings for her partner-in-crime further.

“Abe snores.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Anna does as well. I understand your torment.”

It did. They shared a smile. It didn’t last. Mary looked down at his watch and saw that it was nearly six. She was due to meet Simcoe in an hour, she needed to put her face on first, and rather than talk simple strategy, she would be forced to break the news of police presence in _DeJong Tavern_ ; likely searching for the phone he had so thoughtlessly tossed into the woods. Unless Hewlett had already. He was his own favourite topic of discussion, to be sure.

While she considered how to make her exit, Hewlett’s eyes fixed on the open bathroom door.

“Ah, stay as long as you want Mary, I should really be going though.”

“Me too,” she said as she slid off the bed.

Hewlett walked to the bathroom and opened his medicine cabinet. “Making myself a little cocktail,” he called out bitterly. “You want anything while I am in here?”

Mary’s heart stopped.

“Not unless you have percolators,” she said, knowing he did not and hoping he would drop his accusations before he voiced them.

“It is strange. I thought I would be out of my heart medication by now, but the bottles seemed to have refiled themselves. Curious.”

Mary did not know if he was talking to her or to himself.

“My Xanax, however,” he sighed. “Do me a favour and simply ask. You understand that this is a controlled substance for a reason, don’t you?”

He was calmer than she would have expected. Almost concerned. Mary felt like a child, which, she supposed, was intended.

“I’m sorry I, I just needed-”

“And don’t tell Simcoe. Truly, he mustn’t know. Ah - wait, if you will.” After taking a handful of top shelf, Hewlett re-entered the room, retrieved a Styrofoam box from underneath his bed and handed her a bottle she did not recognize. “It is Scottish soda. Enough sugar to reanimate the dead. You should feel better after drinking it.”

“How long have you known?”

“About you and Simcoe? Since lunch. About your answer to sleep deprivation? I’ve had my suspicions. Saw you in my bed with the bathroom door open. You ought to be more careful.”

“You too.”

“Ah, yes well, I suppose there is something to that.”

“Buy her flowers,” Mary instructed after a long pause. “Nancy I mean, she can be a nightmare. Aberdeen knows the address, I’m sure she would be happy to drive you there.”

They smiled again at one another. It was not friendly, but it was not tense. It was as if Setauket itself was a joke and they were the only two who had heard the punchline.

 

* * *

 

Mary arrived at _Starbucks_ a half an hour ahead of schedule. She saw Simcoe through the shop window; sitting in the same spot she had inspired a public erection that morning. He sipped at his tea, his unblinking eyes, bluer than any she had ever seen, drifted back and forth across a tablet.

Devotion. That was what she loved in him.

She saw it now. She felt it harder. John Graves Simcoe was devoted to his work, to his friends, to his teammates, to his idea of tortured romance, to whatever task may be at hand. Right now that included her protection. Mary took a deep breath and stepped inside.

“You’re early!” he said, rising with a smile. It was then she noticed that his ear was wrapped in bloodied gauze.

Her own eyes grew wide at the sight of him. She meant to offer an apology. She wanted all at once to beg for his forgiveness and to beg him to run away with her, far away from the world of the misery she had fought to hard and for too long to hold on to in fear that it was all the world would ever have to offer. Away from snoring husbands and weeping housemates. From book club meetings with women she was not entirely sure even read. Away from the charity. Away from self-doubt.

She wanted to embrace him and make hundreds of dangerous and empty promises she was not sure her heart would be able to keep. She wanted to be cool, casual, sexy, mysterious. She wanted him to see her as he did the woman whose jeans she was wearing. She wanted to be objectified, or adored, it did not matter which.

She wanted him to look at her as if she were a doll if only because she had become so accustom to men doing so. She wanted silent lips made of stained bone china, if only to prevent her from saying what she did in greeting.

“What are you wearing?” she asked as her gaze fell on his denim shirt.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m alright?” he sneered back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …Lovely faces, I am screaming too (and not just about some of the sport terms I am now tasked with defining.) Let’s just get right to it, shall we?
> 
> _Cricket_ – a bat and ball sport
> 
> _The Ashes_ – a Test cricket series between England and Australia 
> 
> _Attempt / Shot On Target_ \- any shot attempt that would or does enter the goal if left unblocked
> 
> _Three Lions / Les Blues_ – the national teams of England and France, respectively
> 
> _Friendly_ – a test match, the result has no bearing on standing, these usually still trigger an emotional response
> 
> This chapter left me a slightly unsatisfied. Perhaps it was the tone; the emptiness and tragedy of Simcoe’s quest to win the heart of a woman who makes him feel whole. Perhaps it has more to do with the theme of seeking one’s self in others. Then again, I might just be exhausted after writing a character I’ve been fairly generous to from a far less favorable view. Try not to worry your pretty heads too much for Hewlett, though. You don’t imagine I’ve left him without a plan, do you?
> 
> To that end, I have my concerns that the telephone scene ought to have included a second “POV”, but this was an Anncoe chapter, pure and simple. If the conversation came across as haphazard and gratuitous, just wait. Much of what was discussed will be paramount in the next update … which tentatively won’t include any of these characters at all. No deus ex machina just yet, but my favourite barely functioning alcoholic will be back and at it. Oh John Andre, how I’ve missed you.
> 
> It will be a few weeks dear reader before we meet again. Term starts tomorrow and I’m only a year away from my own dissertation-based breakdown. Oh so much to look forward to. It has been a great summer with you guys though.  
> I will try to get updates out bi-weekly, but “Andre” chapters tend to take me longer.
> 
> I hope till then life treats you well. Good luck in whatever adventures you have planned. Drop me a comment or hit the kudos button if you are thus inclined.
> 
> As always, thank you guys so much for reading!  
> XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up Next: OG


	14. The Victim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert Rogers relives his darkest hour, attempts to repair his truck’s engine, vows to extort a gambling debt and is half-willingly conscripted in the fight against the forces that would threaten freedom. 
> 
> Meanwhile, Andre experiences infatuation, though he had another word for it at the time.
> 
> A decade worth of backstories, beer and ill-conceived bets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, lovely faces! It has been a while, and I am sorry about that. Ready to do the thing?
> 
> Warnings: outsider art, heartbreak, substance abuse, sports references, bad intelligence, right wing and realpolitik rants, conversation involving race relations, religion and murder. _Minor character death._
> 
> We good? Awesome … because _guess who is back this go around?_  
>  As always, I hope you enjoy!

The boy should have been back by now.

Rogers wondered exactly how long he had been underway. He had sent him to the junkyard in the morning after ringing the mechanic and been given a seven-hundred dollar quote for work he was certain he could undertake himself without the assistance of a computer to tell him what he already knew he would have to replace. He still maintained that the man could shove the price up his arse, but after five hours of pulling apart the vehicle’s engine, the amount he was quoted for labour no longer seemed unreasonable. It would be dark soon. He had been able to repair the dents in the bonnet and front bumper but unless the boy returned shortly, he would miss another day at the construction site. Seven-hundred dollars, he thought slowly as he looked at the engine parts laying on a sheet on his lawn. Seven-hundred.

He would lose the equivalent with each day his work-truck remained out of commission, but it was principle that stopped him from paying and, as he tried to instil in his workers, a man must have a principle. The mechanic would surely go under for charging prices like his in Setauket, he thought. Even if they were fair. Then again, perhaps not. Rogers doubted that half of the city commuters could change their own oil, much less rebuild half an engine with used parts. Used parts that ought to have arrived hours before.

He wondered if it had been a mistake to entrust Welsh with the money, if Newt was not of the mind to negotiate on price, or if the website had not been updated and the depot did not have any rod bearings he could use as replacement. It was every bit as likely that Welsh had gone to the train station and used the cash on hard drugs, or that he had otherwise not known what he was looking for and had subsequently been too ignorant to ask. Rogers wondered what he had been before circumstance found him at the halfway house. The boys were all rough sorts now, but it was possible that Welsh had been a paper pusher in a previous life.

Useless, Rogers thought, like the rest of that lot.

He did not trust him at the work-site yet. By the same logic, he now admittedly should not have trusted him with the money. If temptation proved too great and the boy relapsed, his caseworker would show up on his doorstep and would surely want to have herself a little looksee. Rogers could not explain everything under his roof. Not today.

His phone buzzed. Knowing it not to be relevant to his task he ignored it, electing instead to stare at the pile of metal rubbish that had served his transportation needs the night before. It had been ten years since he had been in a major accident. Sobriety, he concluded, was an utter waste. In neither incident had he been over the legal limit. In neither incident had he ample time to break. He had a few minor cuts and bruises from the wreck, nothing out of the ordinary for him. Nothing visible. Nothing that would draw attention or cause concern. His pick-up was another matter entirely.

The boy should have returned by now. He had to get this metal mess out of sight. There was something rotten in Setauket. Eyes were always open; mouths were never shut.

The phone buzzed again.

Again.

Twice more in rapid succession.

The device itself was called an _upgrade_ , at least according to the teenager at the mall kiosk who had renewed his contract. It had not cost him anything but valuable time he could have otherwise dedicated to thinking about work he never seemed to have the supplies to complete. Back when he had a flip phone he could reasonably assume that clients were calling with demands or that employees were calling back to explain why these very demands were not being met. This still happened on occasion. This still happened at the exact same rate and frequency to which he had long been accustom, though now it was harder to recognize. Most of the mobile’s activity was in text form, most of the messages sent by the boys that he played football with at the weekend. _John’s team_ , dandies who assumed that asserting their intellect made up for the excessive back passing Rogers saw on the pitch. Even Jordan engaged in it. He read, or rather saw, something written in Italian, meant for the man who was ignoring his debt but sent to everyone. Rogers put the phone down and replaced it in his hand with a bottle of rum chilled by the early spring air.

The boy should have been back by now.

He should probably look for him.

The phone buzzed. John’s team. Paper pushers. Useless, all.

He grunted, deciding that the best course of action was to repack his tool kit and place the salvageable parts of his engine in the garage. He needed to visit the junkyard himself, look for a junkie and explain to the Woodhulls that he would not have the drywall up before Friday. Instead, he looked at the group chat. _A toast to your success_ , Simcoe had written above a photograph Rogers did not bother to click on, expecting that, like Simcoe himself, the insult lacked fineness. The captain’s words were followed by a series of hieroglyphs depicting laughing faces and alcoholic beverages. Rogers wondered how his teammates made the little pictures appear in their texts. He himself could barely master typing with his thumb. He wondered if there was a hieroglyph of $200 that might serve to strengthen his own message. He sent it again. Words only. The only words he had for John Andre.

_You are not going anywhere until you pay your debt to me._

The doctor claimed that he was voluntarily checking himself into rehabilitation or some such shite. Rogers knew better. He knew Andre. He knew he would never honour his word on his own initiative. He must have some secret; some great undoing that could be exploited. Something, or someone, was clearly forcing Andre’s hand, and Rogers meant to discover what or whom. Effects, as he had once warned, had a funny way of becoming causes themselves if left to fester, and for Robert Rogers, the wound was open. He had hit a financial set back in the form of a tree. Two-hundred of the doctor’s dollars would go a long way. Two-hundred dollars he swore to himself he would acquire one way or another before Andre left the city in search of the serenity he promised but could not seem to sell out of his own psychiatric practice. “A man must have a principle,” he muttered, “as a cause demands an effect.”

Rogers took another gulp of rum before carrying the remaining tools to the garage, cursing the drink, the doctor, the tree that had refused to make leave and the boy who should really have returned by this point.

 

* * *

 

His wife left with their nearly adult children and his sense of propriety. She had her reasons; he had known them once. None of this had been a lie, though none of it had been relevant. He had first taken to drink after he had found another to fill a physical void, and several to succeed her when she left as well. There were no women in his house on the outskirts of Setauket anymore. No children, just an empty room, a few empty bottles and the secret he occasionally hoped to drown in them.

He was not an alcoholic, but he was properly buzzed when he first met John Andre a decade prior. It seemed appropriate. Business was hurting. His alimony payments did not alter with the economy. The construction market dried up after the housing bubble burst. He had been forced to choose between declaring bankruptcy and make redundancies.

That is how the whole business started with the State Penal System.

After being let go and not having a transferable skill set, one of his former workers -a man at least five years his senior whom Rogers referred to only as _boy_ \- spent a year in prison after trying to trade steaks purchased with food stamps for meth from a dealer who turned out to be an undercover cop. When he was released he gave Rogers’s address - the only one he knew offhand - as the place he was staying, claiming it to be a halfway house. His former boss did not refuse him. He came with a rent check from the state government. More followed. In the eight months after the boy’s arrival, Rogers had been sent six more addicts to rehabilitate. He put them to work on one of his sites paying only minimum wage and they were grateful. They loved him for it, and he loved them.

Though they remained in his employ, two of his boys had recently moved out. Only one of the vacant rooms had been filled. Six weeks passed. Rogers called local prisons, rehab clinics, and a few personal injury lawyers whose numbers he knew from TV jingles trying to fill it, but nothing came of his promotional efforts. A room he could be getting paid to let remained vacant, and Rogers thought an AA meeting might prove the perfect venue for meeting the sort of client he sought.

For the first time in his adult life, he found himself in a church.

A little soothmoother with some air of authority who initially seemed his best bet for taking up residence under his roof would have nothing of it. Rather than allow Rogers to go around giving his pitch, he made him stand up in front of the group and explain a problem that largely only manifested itself during the Old Firm derby.

“Hi,” he started awkwardly in the given structure. “My name’s Robert. Ahm an alcoholic. S’been bout three-fourths an hour since m’last, and amur another moment ah walk out.”

“Hi Robert,” the room echoed. It was a familiar chorus for them. He wondered if they had understood or even listened to the rest of what he had said. The Englishman who had started the meeting by handing out a few tokens and telling some rubbish about surrendering his licence invited him to continue. Rogers spoke about divorce which seemed to appeal to the crowd’s sympathies more than his honest decelerating about later getting himself properly trashed had. He left immediately after he finished, without finding that sobriety was indeed preferable, and, thanks to the smug, pretty-boy Brit, without finding a new tenant. He walked to the nearest pub, as promised.

A few days later, the same Englishmen who had lead the AA meeting joined him.

“John Andre,” he introduced himself again with a smile that failed to effect Rogers’s disposition towards him.

“Hi John,” he echoed, rolling his eyes. He moved his ale in an attempt to indicate to John Andre that he was not indeed welcome on the stool beside him, but the signal was misunderstood.

“Relax. I’m not here solely to watch this week’s match either,” he smiled lifting the glass of wine the bartender had since handed to him. “Cheers.”

In the same fashion that Andre claimed to be in recovery whilst hiding out in drinking holes, Rogers reasoned, he also lied about being a fan -or even a follower- of the beautiful game. They were in the middle of an international break. Scotland had just lost to Switzerland in a friendly, which, if anything else the young man claimed about his history was true, he really ought to have known.

The match on the pub’s small, flickering rear-projection television was two weeks old. Rogers had seen it once before, ESPN2 had aired it twice since. City won in the end, a reality of which the man wearing a United jersey seemed unaware. Rogers took it upon himself to inform him. Andre had ten dollars that said he was wrong. He never paid his debt in cash, but he bought Rogers enough drink during the game that the Scotsman forgot to call him on it.

“Are you a City supporter then?” Andre asked after the match ended exactly as Rogers said it would.

“Rangers.”

“Queens Park?”

“Glasgow,” he spat.

After the short exchange, they opted to drink in silence. Rogers had disliked him instantly and immensely.

The sentiment never softened in the years since, but Andre did not judge him when he occasionally needed a beer to get through the day, and in that manner, an artificial familiarity developed. Secrets slipped through pints and at some point Rogers had told him about Samuel Tallmadge. Andre had offered nothing memorable in response. This might have gone some ways to solidifying a friendship, but by that point Andre had not only prevented Rogers from shopping for tenants at Alcoholics Anonymous, he had taken to stealing them from under his roof.

 

* * *

 

He had seen her naked twice before first making love to her. The first time was at a gallery opening he had been given tickets to. She was three metres tall and her face was a mystery. Originally, Andre had assumed that the flowing blonde hair that fell just above the figure’s shoulders belonged to the artist herself, but he was delighted to be corrected. They exchanged pleasantries when he introduced himself. “Artist or model?” she had asked in reply. “I dabble in both I fear,” he replied. “Me too,” she said coyly. He was infatuated. She had not offered her name.

He took a live drawing class a few weeks later when he encountered her again. There was a difference between looking at a model for perspective and gazing at one with desire. His sketch suffered for it.

It was hardly his first time observing the exposed flesh of a young woman but even decades later he would remember it as being a singular instance. Although the room around her disappeared and her figure was all he saw, it seemed he did not see her at all. He dreamt her. Her body remained perfectly still for one hundred twenty minutes. Slightly leaned back on a stool draped in dark fabric that made her pale skin seem to glow, one impossibly long leg bent, arms crossed behind her head. If her muscles cramped against the sting of sustained sedentariness she gave no indication. Her visage remained serene. She was so natural that she hardly seemed exposed. Andre instead felt himself bare. Conscious. Alive. Occasionally, the model’s eyes seemed to glaze. Occasionally, they seemed to dance. When they fell on him, they seemed to read right into the intent he wished he could reign in. He crossed his legs as best he could. She successfully fought back a mocking smile.

He first learned her name, or rather one that she used, after the class had ended and his piece was less than half-complete. He would never finish it, though he would sketch her countless times in a feeble attempt to recapture the attraction he felt when he knew nothing of her beyond the curve of her neck which a professional had so masterfully depicted.

“Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Philomena Cheer!” Patience Lovell said jovially as she handed the model a silken robe and a cup of coffee. Philomena smiled and curtsied and walked around for a long while as she stretched. Andre hurried to finish some shading while the instructor gave him a few tips he wished he could remember. At the time, Patience Lovell was already gaining recognition in New York for her talents in painting and sculpture. A few months later one of her pieces would sell for millions at Sotheby’s and she would no longer offer classes in his price range. Though he would continue to see the artist on occasion, cocktail parties and art galas were hardly the venue to ask for tips on how to complete a picture he doubted she remembered her influence had brought into existence. Its incompletion never seemed to bother the woman who would become his wife.

“You dabble?” Philomena said as she first examined the work with delight. _You remember me then?_ Andre wanted to reply. Instead, he asked her if she wanted to get another coffee. Instead, he took her home.

Andre dwelled in an open flat in the UES that his esteemed colleague had long since lost interest in and was otherwise trying to sell. “If you like the apartment so much, it is yours,” he told him with a laugh. Pricing was never discussed. Andre lived there rent-free for a year before her was able to make an offer, an offer which was promptly rejected. Two years into their marriage, Philomena would purchase the apartment for the asking price of around two million when market recovery threatened to throw them out.

He always wondered if it was she initially fell in love with him or the flat. Her first time inside she mentioned she was living in a crowded halfway house on Long Island.

“Robert Rogers?” Andre inquired, taken slightly aback.

“How did you know?”

“It is ironic; I first met him at an AA meeting.”

“That is ironic given that he isn’t an addict and you are clearly not in recovery.”

“Clearly,” he repeated, pouring them both another glass of port.

“I am not,” she started after a few seconds of silence robbed her of her comfort. “I’m not a criminal or on drugs or whatever you might be thinking. I’m just an actress, or,” she paused, “at least I am trying to be.”

“I’ve always known it to be a scam, darling. I am thinking only of how lovely you are.”

He leaned in to kiss her. The quest was successful, if not short lived. Philomena pulled away, preferring to admire and comment on the architecture. She had learned a few terms in her time under Robert’s roof. Andre felt invisible and opportunistic. _Infatuated_ , as he would later describe it. At the time if felt like something deeper, at the time perhaps it was.

Philomena explained that she had been priced out of her apartment when a real estate developer and purchased the property and the court upheld that a two hundred percent increase in rent was legal. It would take months to get on the wait list for normal housing assistance. In addition to the occasional modelling gig, Philomena, like much of the rest of the class Julliard had recently graduated, was trying to pay off her crippling student debt by serving food and pouring drink. Her tips went but so far. Unable to find a room on such short notice, she had been living at a shady motel on the Connecticut border. One morning she had been late for work and explained why to a group of day drinkers in an effort to stop them from calling her boss to complain. Word of her plight travelled quickly through the backwater. Rogers visited on her next night shift to offer an alternative.

The plan was simple. The plan had worked. Philomena used her stage make up skills to create meth scars for her meeting with a number of bureaucrats. She copied the mannerisms of many of her new neighbours from The Sugarhouse Inn, explained that she was in recovery but was homeless and was given a $400 check to help her become a more productive member of society. She remarked with bitter laughter that it was the only steady acting job she had been able to obtain.

Andre offered her another part. He put the entirety of his savings into negotiation.

“Thirty-thousand?” she laughed. “What exactly are you asking of me, Mr. Andre?”

“Doctor,” he corrected, “I’m asking for your hand in marriage, Miss Cheer.”

“Cheer is just my stage name. A … translation. I am thinking of changing my given one, though I’m not sure I like _Andre_ very much.”

“Appreciate my predicament. I am trying to recruit a young, beautiful, talented actress for a simple but rather specific role. Pretend to love me for three years. Love me as we both love New York City. I can make it worth your while.”

To his delight, she consented herself to the proposal. She fell into her roll; she fell into his bed. At the time it felt like love, at the time perhaps it was.

There were times when he forgot that they were merely married on paper. They went out on her night off, filling the evenings with culture and concupiscent conversation. Then almost suddenly, the success that Andre had long believed the city promised finally introduced itself, only, not to him. Philomena was cast as the lead in a Broadway revival and enjoyed instant acclaim. For the first time since his Green Card approval, Andre was forced to see her as an actress, to see their marriage as a play.

On opening night, her saw her passionately kissing one of her co-stars in her dressing room after the final curtain fell. He wondered when she had stopped kissing him that way. He wondered if she had ever loved him at all. Dejected, he fucked her understudy. In their bed. In the flat which she would soon own outright.

Philomena did not even care enough to call him on it, or on any of the girls and boys who followed. Andre wanted her to angry; he wanted to know that she had once been his. He was afraid to ask.

Property, rather than passion, kept them together past the three years they had agreed to. He did not want to let go of the life he enjoyed under the light of her star, she did not want to pay alimony. In time he found his own success, a sting of wealthy immigrants came to him for the drugs they had enjoyed recreationally back home. Martha Dandridge brought him on at Columbia and the wage gap narrowed. His envy faded. Sometimes he loved her, though never at the same times she seemed to love him. He never brought up divorce after her initial refusal. He never let her speak of it again. The resentment this fostered made it easier to pretend that she had never been the sole object of his affection, that his wandering eyes were never completely fixated on her posed figure.

The unfinished sketch became the lock screen background on every phone he had since owned, including the one he used to play her or women who resembled her for the powerful men who bought into the illusion he created; in the same way he had once bought into the one he had once paid Philomena to create. Sometimes he drank. Sometimes he cried. Sometimes he considered that he had never loved her, or Arnold or Peggy or anyone else. Maybe they were all just extensions of himself he felt particularly charmed by. Maybe he was completely alone in life and his thoughts no longer amused him as they once had. Maybe everyone else was interesting and he was simply and observer. Maybe he had ruined them all.

 

* * *

 

The last time Robert Rogers went to an AA meeting was the first he spoke sincerely.

Mena had a shift at DeJong’s that evening. It would be among her last. She was training someone new to take over for her, a boy with a full beard who retained his baby fat. Rogers had yet to commit his name to memory. The struggling actress was moving out of the backwater, into the city, where -in her own words- she _belonged_. It would be years before she was on Long Island again. He would come to miss her, though he had no way of knowing this at the time. The circumstances of her imminent departure however had him livid. He knew that his old friend John Andre was responsible for the slight dip in his income -one that he collected rather than earned- and, through their mutual friend, that ol’ Johnny was filling in for whomever regularly led the meetings which he had not bothered himself with since obtaining his APA accreditation.

Rogers did not go to church. He did not know anything about the one this particular AA meeting was being held in.

He came directly from work. The meeting would not start for an hour. He hoped to talk to Andre before it began, but the doctor had yet to arrive. Some of the world’s good people had set up a table with generic brand icing filled cookies and room-temperature lemonade. Rogers stared at it, hungering for anything beyond what was on display. From the adjacent room he heard a deep baritone he recognized instantly and his hunger momentarily dissipated. He smiled at the irony. After two years, if Andre did not show up in time to interfere, he might yet get a worker -if not a replacement tenant- out of this exercise of patience.

“When did you get back?” another kid who was setting up folding chairs in a conference room asked.

“August. I’m at NYU now,” Jordan replied.

“Glad I caught you at fall break.”

“Me? Glad I caught you! Ben! Fucking gracing us small folk from New Haven.”

“You say that like it is on the other side of the world,” Ben teased.

“Other side? Nah man, you think Rome would have something to offer but it is just the same shit. People way more racist though.”

Rogers heard himself saying the Lord’s name in the head he shook. As he was in a church, he wondered if that counted as a prayer. “Same Jordan,” he sighed. He had assumed he had beaten that sentiment of the boy when he worked on one of his sites the summer before his senior year in high school. Race, Rogers maintained, was a fiction perpetrated by politics to keep the people divided and fixated on debating social policy initiatives, rather than on trade issues, things that he could reasonably assume effected the main stream. As Rogers benefited from current social policies this gave him mild concern. If funds were reallocated from one project to another it might hurt his bottom line.

Paperwork, he thought.

It all came down to paperwork and to the people who were paid to process it. He wondered if government workers took home a greater share of taxes than he did for affixing their stamps to whatever form required it. Doubtful. He was honest. He worked with his hands. He housed and employed rough sorts of every colour and creed. Not that that was in itself significant. It was just another box to check on a piece of paper. Those would not disappear no matter how much time people invested in discussing the matter. When Jordan came back to working for him, he would need to set him straight again.

“Yeah?” asked another boy Rogers could tell was in need of a real-world education.

“Yeah. Segregation is still a thing. Not like with water fountains or public institutions or what have you but I couldn’t get into half the bars my friends wanted to go to because of the colour of my skin. God bless the USA. Least here you can sue for discrimination.”

“Is that what you plan on doing after graduation? Civil Rights? I bet you -”

“Man, I can’t even think about graduation yet, or law school. I deferred in pursuit of a high school language elective I know you’ll recall. I mean … I’ve a few transferable credits from the summer semester at Sapienza but I’m still a freshman at a state school, not like you Mr. Ivy League … Skull-and-Bones.”

“I’m not-,” Ben laughed. Perhaps realizing he was in the house of the Lord and not wishing to lie, he continued with a change of subject. “You could transfer to Yale, you know - if you wanted to.”

“Nah,” he smiled. “There is this chick - gorgeous, smart as fuck-” he said slowly.

“Anna? That girl from your civics class you were talking about?”

“Anna?” Jordan laughed. “She’s just a friend. She’s got … a lot of friends. How we met though. Kind of. I was chilling with her at the place up the road when I met Abby.”

He went on to talk about his latest conquest, though conquest was perhaps not the best word. What he described was more of a sustained siege. He could tell she liked him. She had recently let him meet her son. Jordan wanted to introduce her to his parents over Christmas but he did not know if she was ready for that step yet. Ben was hung up on the fact she had a child.

“How old is she?”

“Just turned twenty-one. Her son is five.”

“Oh.”

“Man, don’t be -”

“I’m not - I’m, is that what you are worried about? That your parents will disapprove?”

“I think they understand how biology works. Abby is a great mother and a strong woman who made the best out of a teenage pregnancy. She can just be a little … I guess private is the word I am looking for. Over-protective. She lives in this little bubble she knows someone is going to come around and burst and she is worried it is going to be me.”

“If you don’t mind the intrusion,” the unmistakable voice of John Andre droned. Rogers shoved a stale biscuit into his mouth and left the table. He had words for Andre. Furthermore, he had to intercede before the good doctor could give those kids whatever awful advice he had gleaned from his experiences flipping through one Freud or fucking another.

“Boy!” he called out as he entered the small conference room the drunkards would soon be using, its walls with children’s drawings of animals getting on the biblical arc. It was disconcerting. He wished he saved some of his own children’s doodles from when they were small and he was an important figure in their lives. Now they only called at Christmas. His relationship with his parents had been the same. It was the same way with John from what he knew. Rogers assumed that everyone who would soon fill the chairs the boys were meant to be setting up was in the exact same boat. He glanced at the boys, wondering if life somehow did not affect those born into relative affluence in the same way.

Jordan was shaking his head as if he could read Rogers’s mind.

“Everything I said about people being more racist in Italy … hey, Mr. Rogers. It’s Akinbode. Or Jordan, if you must. Boy is derogatory and just … dated. Come up with some new insults.”

It was not at all how he meant it. Jordan knew that before he turned down the internship Rogers had kindly offered to go off to Italy on an exchange scheme.

“Leave them be, Robert,” Andre cautioned through a clenched smile.

“Andre.”

“It is alright,” Jordan interjected. “That’s the way he has always been. You remember Ben, right? You bought us both beer a few times when we were still in high school.”

Andre said something disapproving. Rogers nodded without returning his attention to the kids. He used to buy beer for a lot of under aged drinkers. There was not much for teenagers to do in the backwaters and they would find their way to ale one way or another. It was better if they drank in their own basements or in public parks near their homes than looking for trouble in the city. At least he used to think that way before he realised just how ill lit the backroads were. He did not buy alcohol for children anymore, regardless of the mark-ups they offered to pay.

A man had to have a principle.

“My, my, look who we have here,” a square jawed blonde in a preacher’s frock said as he entered. There was something familiar about him Rogers failed to place.

“Hey Dad,” Ben replied.

“Reverend.”

“ _Jordan Akinbode_ , how long has it been?”

“A year I think. I didn’t get back too long ago.”

“Your parents told me. They missed you so much. We all did. You know, it takes less than an hour on Sunday morning to get here from your campus…”

So, Rogers thought, the abandonment of one’s parents did not in fact exclude itself to the proletariat. He looked at the children’s drawings once more. The dotted eyes of the various creatures all seemed to be watching him.

“They didn’t convert you in Rome, did they?” the preacher man asked Jordan after greeting the rest of the room. He laughed as he patting him on the back.

“He hasn’t been back all that long, pops. Leave him be,” Ben interjected whilst Jordan offered an answer.

“No. No, sir. I went to the Vatican twice though. Once to marvel, once in hopes of running into other American tourists. Most of my Sundays I spent playing soccer. There not much else to do when your living on a budget.”

“Soccer,” Ben repeated with a hint of disapproval. “Don’t tell me you think that is a sport now.”

“You run for ninety minutes, how is it not a sport?”

“It is a game at best.”

“The Beautiful Game,” Andre mused. Rogers want to tell him to get fucked but held his tongue in the presence of the priest. “It is rather curious. I myself had no interest in the game until moving stateside where it holds no predominance.”

“That explains everything,” the Scotsman spat.

“I mean, sport, game whatever, give me a goal and I’ll score.”

“You might try applying some of that confidence to your romantic entanglement,” Andre offered.

Ben explained the situation to his father. “Jordan is seeing someone who he wants to introduce to his parents but he is worried she will see it as moving too fast.”

“What were you planning on?”

“Christmas.”

The reverend thought it over for a moment. “Invite her to a small gathering in which they will also be in attendance. Don’t spring it on her and don’t make it too intimate. You can go back to your parents’ house in the evening for coffee. Don’t stay too long. Protest and say you want to go as soon as your mother pulls out the baby photos. Make her laugh.”

“How though? I was a damn cute kid.”

“Language,” the preacher warned, nodding at the cross affixed to the adjacent wall.

“Sorry.”

“I agree with the Reverend. Keep it casual.”

“Casual, John? Yer moving rather quickly though now ain’t ye?”

“I confess my understanding as to why that the brevity of our engagement is causing you concern, but rest assured Robert, I recognize how very blessed I am that Philomena has agreed to become my wife.”

The reverend congratulated him and asked if he had a date, if he had found a church. Salesman, like the rest of us, Rogers scuffed. Andre said that he had not though it looked lovely here. He asked if there had recently been a wedding. No, Ben responded. His older brother died a few years ago. His family always put up a small memorial. That is what the flowers were from. That is why he was home a few days before Yale’s fall break officially began. Rogers remembered where he saw the man before.

“John,” he interrupted. “We have business. Meet me at DeJong’s when yer through here. Jordan, good luck with yer lady. Ben. Reverend Tallmadge.”

With that, he left. Once more, it was without a new tenant or an old worker.

He finished a fifth of rum before John Andre joined him. By the time the younger man sat down after exchanging a kiss with his bride-to-be, Rogers had long since lost interest in talking about her and the funds he was stealing in taking Philomena’s hand.

“Yer a shrink or something, right?” he asked as John sat down.

He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly as if he was curious. He was not. He was more of an actor than a doctor and everyone knew it, but Rogers was pished right proper, and Andre was there.

“Are you buying?”

Rogers held his hand up for another round. “Leave the bottle,” he told the boy whom Andre identified as Brewster. When he left, the pair drank a glass of Whaler’s Original in silence before Rogers said, “I killed a kid once. Two years ago. The reverend’s son. The one the flowers were for.”

Andre nodded but did not verbally respond. Rogers went on to explain that he was driving home at night from a work site, taking one of the poorly lit side roads that lead to his home. He was exhausted. He knew he was driving at the posted speed limit because he had set the cruise control to 70 miles per hour, not trusting himself to keep his foot level on the gas pedal. He did not see the kid until after he hit him head on. He did not see him at all until his picture was on the front page of the local newspaper the next morning. He did not stop. He knew the boy died upon impact or would shortly after. It was too late. He had not seen him. In the days after the boy became all he saw. Sometimes, he still was. Sometimes Rogers wondered if he was in fact an alcoholic like all those poor bastards who went to Andre for advice; for sometimes he would drink until Samuel Tallmadge’s face went away, sometimes he would drink until it returned. Otherwise, he only drank as he had before - when the Rangers were underperforming. “As one ought,” Andre concluded for him. He then had either a great deal to say in response or nothing at all. Rogers did not recall and it was not significant.

That was the last they ever spoke of the incident.

In the years that followed, they stuck to discussing trial matters and built a sort of comradery around them. Rogers grew to respect Andre for his digression and assumed it was mutual when recently the doctor turned to him and said, “I killed a kid.” They were at the same bar. There was a half-empty bottle between them. The symmetry was shaking but Rogers offered what he could.

“You need to hide a body?”

“He’s not dead yet. I wish I felt something but I don’t.”

“There isn’t much a grey area between alive and dead.”

“You would be surprised.”

“Then do what you have to do.”

“Yea.”

What he apparently had to do was finish the bottle of plonk and tell him that Hewlett would likely be out for a few weeks but Wakefield could fold back if need be. Simcoe probably would not be playing on Sunday either and Rogers would thusly need to take the captaincy again if he were up to it. He was. Nothing more was said of the kid who was either dead or dying or of what role Andre had played in any of it.

 

* * *

 

Abe Woodhull worked for him sometimes. Worked in the sense that he performed manual labour, not in the sense that Rogers paid him anything for his efforts. The day after he crashed his truck into a tree however, he did end up reimbursing him for the replacement parts he brought by when it became clear that Welsh would not be returning.

“What happened?” Abe asked as he looked at the engine after counting the crumpled up greenbacks he had been handed. Rogers explained the work he would need to do to the engine. He did not mind showing the boy a thing or two about automobiles if he was interested. Abe did not have a car of his own that Rogers knew of but it might go some way with the missus.

“I meant-”

“Tree wouldn’t make way.”

Almost exactly as it happened a decade before, on the same stretch of road, someone limped out in front of him in the wee hours. He did not see him in time to break, but he saw him in time to swerve. Seeing that the man was injured, Rogers tried to call an ambulance, but the man protested repeatedly demanding, rather than asking _“Don’t you know who I am?”_

He asked what happened and the man said he had been beaten and taken captive by a terrorist agent. A sleeper cell. A convert. Someone who had had apparent training in some shit _-_ stan country. When Fox News spoke of no-go areas in Paris and London, they damn well weren’t kidding, he’d spat. Europe was a mess and now those bastards had operatives in America, hiding out in dive bars when you would last expect them. Oh, he said, when Washington hears of this!

Rogers did not reply.

The man changed his tone slightly, if only for a moment. What happened to Peggy? Maybe they had her too. It was all Obama’s fault somehow. When the Republicans retook the White House –

Rogers conceded that ringing the police was probably not the best of ideas. The man was clearly on drugs, and police involvement would do him no favours. He put his car in neutral, had the man sit in the driver’s seat and pushed it a quarter mile to his house.

His back, arms and legs were sore.

He had a drink and saw the dead Tallmadge boy.

In the morning, after he had given the man aspirin, orange juice and an ice packet, after he called the mechanic and sent the boy to the junk yard, he turned on the news. Nothing the man had said had been a lie or an exaggeration, excepting that the Al Qaeda operative that had come close to taking him alive had not captured Peggy Shippen. He would have called the cops then had he not nearly run the senator over on the same stretch of road where the Dodge that sat dented on his lawn had slain Samuel Tallmadge. Another Tallmadge was leading the investigation, and Rogers would be damned if he gave him any kind of lead on a cold case. He had his boys to think about. Where would they go if he went to prison? He wrongfully assumed that the day would give him ample time to think of a plausible story for how he had found the senator. He should have turned his phone off. Andre should have paid him the sum he owed long ago.

“The statute of limitations for a hit and run in New York is three years,” Abe said when Rogers finished relaying the entire narrative. “You can neither be arrested nor convicted. But you can’t go to the police.”

“Why would that be?”

Abe explained that Tallmadge had paid Whitehall a visit in the morning along with two international operatives. From what he overheard through the open air-vent from his post in the garage under Hewlett’s apartment, the senator was last seen at DeJong Tavern, something that lined up with the account Rogers had been given. Through the combined espionage efforts of himself, Edmund Hewlett and Aberdeen Declesias, they discovered an international conspiracy around Arnold’s disappearance. Aberdeen did not know that Abe had been involved at all in the espionage as he’d pretended to be hungover in front of her, and Hewlett did not know that Abe knew he was guilty of attempted murder, as Hewlett was a fool. Rogers could not go to the police. They were all in on it, the NYPD, the FBI and all of their foreign allies, including, it seemed Whitehall’s own member of the landed nobility. While Abe did not personally agree with the senator’s politics, he was a patriot first and foremost and would not let a man who had served his country with pride and distinction become victim to Setauket’s little king.

“Hewlett?” Rogers scoffed. His appraisal of his fellow Scot was rather low.

“He was arrested for show after talking with someone back in England about the murder and immediately released,” Abe shook his head. “I am watching him. Someone has to.”

“Well ain’t that some serpentine shite.”

Rogers did not know what to believe, but until he could verify that what Abe said about the statute bore true, he would not be going to the police out of self-interest. From everything else Abe had explained, someone clearly had it in for Benedict Arnold. There was clearly a profit to be made.

Abe opened his mouth to speak. He suddenly found himself with a pocketknife against his neck.

“I like you, boy. But from here on oot yer reportin’ tae me.”

Rogers warned him what would happen if he told anyone, including his missus, about what they discussed. When he was certain Abe understood, he smiled, retracted the blade and repeated his line about holding Abe in fond regards.

“What are we going to do about Senator Arnold?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, my darlings, in keeping with the light theatrical theme, we have almost made it to the end of the first act. It will likely be a bit of a wait again before the next chapter, but I hope you will stick around. Someone is about to get their just deserts, and after that, we can _really_ start having fun. I am curious who you think it might be, if you have any idea at all, but before I ask you to comment a response to my question, let me answer a few of yours:
> 
>  _Soothmoother -_ a Scottish insult for one who talks with a British accent.
> 
>  _Old Firm derby -_ a match between the Glasgow based clubs Rangers and Celtic
> 
>  _international break -_ when club football is suspended so players can wear the colours of their respective countries
> 
>  _City / United -_ Manchester based football clubs
> 
>  _Glasgow Rangers -_ with 54 league titles, the most successful club in the Scottish Premiership.
> 
>  _Queens Park -_ another team called Rangers (I can’t resist. I just can’t resist. And yes, that is the club I’ve cited Simcoe as supporting.) Based out of London, they are currently 14th in the Championship and _oh my word!_ I just realised that I am going to have to explain promotion and relegation to you. Next time.
> 
>  _Sotheby’s -_ a fine art auction house in London
> 
>  _Freud -_ the official translation is _joy,_ but once again, I really couldn’t resist. Joy / Cheer are synonymous and I am such a dork with names.
> 
>  _Pished -_ Scottish for pissed 
> 
> _Whaler’s Original -_ a cheap dark rum sold in America. I liked the name, and associating it with Caleb in a small way.
> 
>  _plonk -_ really cheap red wine, not a brand, just a word.
> 
> Did I miss anything? Please be so kind to as to let me know.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading. Comments and Kudos are always appreciated, and I am still super curious if you have any idea about who is about to be subject to sentencing.
> 
> Till next time, XOXO - Tav
> 
> Up Next: Match of the Day (edit: j/k, it is an Annlett chapter, I know, I know, I always do this. Funny thing is the original ch. 15 was already half written. I know, I know, I always do that too. I am the worst.)


	15. The Presumptive (Pt.1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben rallies his forces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely faces it has been forever, how have you been? 
> 
> This chapter is part one of the entirely too long update I’ve been working on since last we spoke, and since the introduction works as an overview to get everyone caught back up (at the from the police’s point of view), I decided to just post it on its own. I will answer all the questions I raise about Hewlett in a day or two (really, it is done. This is a legitimate double update.) But for now, I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Warnings: OCs in insignificant speaking roles, post partem depression, suicide, fraud, musical theatre, you know the staples. There is a pretty long passage about Simcoe’s past that is sort of sad, but you know, he turn out alright. (-ish)
> 
> As always thanks for reading!

Ben Tallmadge got the call at two o’clock in the morning. By noon, the day had been too long. At six in the evening, no amount of saturated fat would suffice to alleviate his stomach from the pain of three cans of Red Bull and countless twenty-five cent Café Americanos from the precinct’s vending machine. He knew this from experience, but he persevered, taking another bite of the now lukewarm Chinese takeaway the District Attorney had been so kind as to send over to him and his team. Ben knew it was a bribe, but he was in no position to refuse. After sixteen hours of fruitless labour, no one had either the adrenaline or artificial energy left to carry on. He needed to settle his stomach. He needed to line it with enough carbohydrates that the next watered down shot of espresso he drank would not be immediately disgorged.

Braxton, Baker, Yilmaz, Sackett, Sanchez and Russo watched him from across the conference table as he chewed; waiting for him to translate the evidence, sworn statements and witness testimony they had spent the day gathering into a plan of action. He swallowed reluctantly. It was not that he had no such plan to speak of; it was that he could already hear their objections to it. He was too tired to employ niceties to suppress a protest; with any luck, his subordinates were either too tired to put up much of a resistance or had enough reserved energy between them to recognize how fruitless it was to fight him.

“Mr. Sackett,” Ben started when the door flew open. He rose immediately in greeting. The entire task force did. Where the men and women under his command would sit when invited to do so, Ben remained standing, occasionally pacing, for the duration of what had just transformed into a conference.

They had known each other for less than ten hours but it was already clear to Ben that his FBI contact Alexander Hamilton never failed to make an entrance. He was carrying a package of to-go cups, two canisters of coffee and a zip-lock bag filled with packets of cream, sugar and low-fat imitations of both.

“Your coffee is famously bad,” he laughed upon seeing the inspector’s expression.

Ben suddenly resented his colleague’s pep and enthusiasm, wondering how the FBI could possibly have intelligence on the status of the NYPD’s vending machine when they seemingly had nothing else prevalent to offer the Arnold Investigation. The partnership had thus far proven itself a disappointment. Ben had not seen or heard anything from Hamilton since they parted at Whitehall that morning. Three hours after he rang him to let him know that a suspect was in custody, Hamilton had sent over a civilian interrogator rather than return a phone call, and by then it had been too late to serve as anything but an insult. Hamilton poured a cup for Ben after having first served the two women present. Ben accepted it out of necessity, nodding at Hamilton’s explanation for his silence without hearing his words.

He pictured Hamilton laughing with Lafayette all day, feeding misinformation to the press the way one might throw crumbs at passing pigeons from the patio of a pricy café whilst Ben’s own troops blead in the field. His soldiers did not seem to mind however. They had been bought by the coffee the same way they had been bought by the chicken chow mein. Ignoring the Assistant Director in Charge, he studied his subordinates, wondering who among them would be the first to betray him to Smith. They were stirring milk and sugar into their coffee and smiling as they toasted with it.

“Raise a glass to free-dom,” Yilmaz giggled as whispered to Sanchez beside her who snorted to avoid a chuckle. Hamilton did not share the constable’s hesitance and let out a full-bodied laugh.

“If it is my destiny to be constantly compared to anyone, it might as well be Lin-Manuel Miranda.”

He explained briefly to a jealous audience that he had actually seen the show twice with his wife, who, as luck should have it, shared the name of the female lead and worked in Child Protective Services. The coffee, he said, had been her idea. Evidently, she worried that the NYPD would see his intrusion into the investigation as stepping on their toes. No one said anything to dispute this statement and Ben found himself reanimated by the unwavering loyalty of his troops. The ADIC explained the work his department was doing in conjunction with other acronymic organizations to _smoke the supposed terrorist out of their caves_. Supposed was Hamilton’s word. The rest he seemed to have borrowed from Fox News. Ben’s whole team had seen the special report. He suspected that the DA had been correct and was trying to be helpful when she warned him that what - if any -information the FBI had on Arnold’s disappearance would not be shared with the boys in blue. He clenched his fist and swallowed his indignation along with another sip of Eliza’s thoughtful bribe.

“Alright, what have you got, Tallmadge?” ADIC Hamilton asked when he had finished quoting the right-wing media outlet at length.

“Regardless of the aftermath the victim’s disappearance is having on the global stage,” Ben started in a hard but level tone, “I believe we need to focus our investigation locally.”

“I fear that may be harder than you imagine. Concerning your primary suspect, I’ve been in contact with Section 6 and they have been less than forthcoming with assistance, as one might expect given the predominance of the Hewlett family. The ambassador was also uncommitted in his response to my request. I’ll send it up the chain of command but how effective -”

“Pardon, Sir. I am not sure any of that is necessary. As I’ve stated I believe we ought to spend more of our efforts in and around the town of Setauket. Several witnesses place Arnold at DeJong Tavern yesterday evening. When CSI swept this morning they were unable to find a single fingerprint in any of the rooms open to the public. Everyone we interviewed stated that DeJong’s is never particularly clean, and fifteen years of health inspection records support this claim. Even the manager admitted that she would have been less shocked by blood.”

“What exactly about the crime scene suggest that the case is of local interest?”

“With every respect, Sir, what about a missing senator and an immaculately clean suburban dive bar suggests Islamic Terrorism?”

“Oh, we are of one mind there, Tallmadge, regardless of the podium the media has erected for these explosive reactionaries in the government which we are sworn to protect to spew from. You have more of my backing than you may imagine. That said I invite you again to answer; what was or was not found in DeJong Tavern that suggests that our search should be focused in Setauket?”

Ben rolled a clear writing board to the front of the conference table where his team was situated, inviting Hamilton to take his seat.

“The last Tweet we have from Arnold places him at DeJong Tavern at 10:03 PM, shortly before he was officially reported missing, as you well know. He used the social media platform to attempt to reach out to Peggy Shippen several times over the course of the evening. Both were expected at the Trump rally, neither were present. Miss Shippen voluntarily came to the precinct this morning and gave an official statement that she spent the night with a childhood friend, a Ms. Abigail Ingram, who as some of you may remember, enjoyed some recognition over a decade ago for living with the Shippens in the Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg during her teenage pregnancy,” he paused. Aside from Braxton who had brought him the background check, no one seemed to have heard of Abigail Ingram, or recognize her face from an ancient campaign commercial viewable on YouTube. Ben added a photograph of her next to the ones he had taped up of Benedict Arnold and Peggy Shippen.

“No? Moving on then. Miss Shippen’s statement is supported by the accounts given by both Ms. Ingram and her son Cicero. Now, if you will direct your attention to the map, this places Peggy less than a mile from where the senator was last seen.”

“Interesting,” Hamilton nodded with what seemed to be genuine curiosity. “Do we have anything to suggest that Shippen visited DeJong’s while in Setauket? Going on Arnold’s Tweets, it doesn’t seem as if he knew where she was staying.”

“Braxton, do want to take this one?”

“Sir,” Braxton affirmed, running his right hand though the back of what remained of his once full head of hair. He was two years younger than Ben, but owing equally to stress and genetics had started balding prematurely at nineteen while still at the academy. He had been shot in the line of service three years prior and moved off the beat during his recovery. It was unfortunate, he lamented, that it so happened that he had a hidden talent for the bureaucratic side of detective work. In uniform, he could wear a hat to cover the pale pink flesh that extended from his thin eyebrows to the backs of his ears. Inside, exposed, it served to reflect and magnify the glow of the fluorescent lights and the playful mockery of his co-workers. Clearing his throat, he continued.

“In speaking to Miss Shippen, I have no reason to believe that she had anything more than a passing acquaintance with Arnold. If, in contradiction to the statements provided by herself and Ms. Ingram, she did visit DeJong’s Tavern last night, I doubt it was for any kind of rendezvous.”

“Do you believe there is anything in either statement that should be contested?” Ben asked.

“I didn’t initially, Sir. But Edmund Hewlett, Anna Strong, Richard Woodhull and Aberdeen Declesias all place Abigail and Cicero at Whitehall between five and seven last night, a time frame over lapping the one given by Peggy and Abigail.”

“Not only that, Sir,” Yilmaz interrupted. “Hewlett’s statement was incredibly detailed and included the name of the pizzeria that Ingram had -according three of the four statements you yourself took -purchased dinner from. One of my cousins happens to work there so I took the inactive to call in and sure enough video footage places Abigail Ingram and her son at Pizzeria Roma early yesterday evening, without Peggy Shippen. I don’t know if it is significant, but she paid with a credit card registered to Jordan Akinbode whom I believe is Hewlett’s lawyer.”

“I knew it,” Braxton smiled, high-fiving Yilmaz.

“Good work, both of you, but we don’t know anything yet except a pizza was purchased and one or more of our witnesses is lying. Who, why, and to what extent has yet to be determined.”

“The proprietors of Pizzeria Roma are lying about being Italian,” Russo rolled his eyes. “What is that Yilmaz? 95th? Just so I can remember never to order from there in the future.”

“You’re lying about being Italian, Jersey Boy,” Yilmaz spat back, waiving a long finger directly under his nose.

Hatice Yilmaz and Michael Russo had been partners since Ben had joined the force. Russo was in his early forties, married with two young children. Though still handsome, his fitness level was waning after the birth of his younger daughter. His thick, wavy dark hair was overgrown, he seemed to have a five o’clock shadow regardless of the hour, and the skin around his eyes had long since become permanently lined and discoloured. Yilmaz, in contrast, was ten years younger and weighed about a hundred pounds less if Ben had to give an estimate. Petite, sleek, and still living at home as a result of having thus far failed her father’s expectation that she should marry a practicing Muslim; she reminded her boss of a small yipping dog that had never been informed of its size. In fact, she had served as the inspiration behind the name of Ben’s dachshund. When she was trying to teach him how to pronounce her given name, Russo interjected that he just called her _Heidi_ ; it was, after all, close enough. Ben stuck to calling his subordinate Yilmaz. “Heidi” lived in his small apartment on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise and, he thought as he watched Mike and Hatice argue about what constituted a pizza, had probably wet the floors by now.

“Braxton,” Ben said, rising his volume to drown out what might well turn into a Mediterranean race war if experience indicated anything.

“Abigail works at DeJong’s at the weekend when it experiences the most traffic. She, Anna Strong – the bar’s manager, and Caleb Brewster –who was working last night, all have keys to the property. Monday through Friday she works as the chief administrative assistant at Howe, Clinton and Associates -associates, apparently, only referring to one Dr John Andre, who, I gather, though a full partner, only works at HCA part-time having something otherwise to do with a university. It is um … a mental health practice on the Upper East Side.”

“I know,” Ben responded. Shifting his attention back to his two bickering sergeants, he asked, “Russo, Yilmaz, you took a trip down there after the talks I myself, and then Sanchez here with the support of the FBI contract labour Dr Dandridge, had with John Graves Simcoe, did you not?” He hoped his tone, intended for Hamilton, did not make Sanchez feel as if her contributions were unwanted. Thus far, through no fault of her own, they just been unnecessary. Simcoe was not a suspect. Ben was surprised the feds had even wanted to speak with him. He was still aggravated at having been kicked out of his own office as a result.

“You want what I got on Andre or Simcoe first?”

“Let’s begin with Andre, if you believe you’ve found anything of relevance.”

“John Andre, born in London to Swiss immigrant parents, raised in Manchester where he later read phycology at University on scholarship, bringing him into contact with the same Martha Dandridge gifted to us by the FBI.”

“She didn’t mention it,” Sanchez interjected. Intrigued, Hamilton gestured for Russo to continue.

“Moved to the United States in the fall of 2005 on a work visa, and, get this, musical theatre nerds; has been married to Philomena Cheer since 2008.”

“Let me guess,” Ben said, “specifically since right before his visa was due to expire.”

“I’m not sure entirely, Boss, but I share your suspicions. According to every co-worker excepting Abigail Ingram, there marriage has been a rocky one, ridded with scandals and public affairs from both parties. Andre apparently has something of a drinking problem, which one look around his office would confirm on its own. That said, as of this very morning, he is apparently on a six-week sabbatical while he visits a rehab facility, apparently for the third time since his tenure at the practice began over a decade ago.”

“With regard to why we were sent with a subpoena,” Yilmaz jumped in, stressing the conjunction, “Andre has been seeing John Graves Simcoe as a patient for four years, Edmund Hewlett for two.”

“I took Simcoe’s record,” Russo said. “Born in Islamabad to English parents. His father was a military engineer working with the IAEA, his mother was an UN Goodwill Ambassador advocating against Pakistan’s then-in-development nuclear program. Needless to say, neither was particularly effective in convincing the PAEC not to detonate-”

“Facts, Russo?” Ben said flatly.

“Right, so after giving birth to little John Graves, Kathrine Simcoe experienced extreme post-partem depression and, after nearly drowning her infant son while bathing him in a sink, returned to London. She seems not to have had any contact with the boy until ten years later following the death of her by then estranged husband. John Graves lived with his father, also called John, in Pakistan until 1998 when he -Simcoe Sr. - was the target and victim of a roadside bomb, the details of which remain classified. John Graves was the only survivor. Upon being discharged from hospital, he lived briefly with his mother until she took her own life in a prescription drug overdose; according the suicide note -which John Graves has apparently yet to read- for fear of otherwise harming him. She wrote in her farewell that after slapping John Graves so hard the she broke his lip when he didn’t respond to her calls – apparently, not out of defiance, he was deaf related to the bombing. Anyway, she said that she saw that, well,” he paused, studying the document, “to quote, _whatever natural feelings of maternal love or instinct other woman are endowed with, I am not. Therefore in appeal to what remains of my logic, I take my life and, with luck, my hate with me, leaving everything else I possess to you, my son_ – which she underlined three times- _in hope for a happy future that I’ve always known I could never take part in. John, forgive me. Someday you will understand that you are better off alone. ~~Love~~ , -_crossed out _\- Mummy.”_

“After that he went to military boarding school, studied economics at Cambridge, moved here after working at a London-based investment firm for a few years and has apparently been very successful. According to both this,” Russo said, indicating to the file open before him, “and his police record, he has a list of minor offences, mostly related to disturbing the peace – in most cases with his fists. There are several incidences of his driving in the wrong lane, though those all mostly date back to his first few months in the States. Stopped seeing John Andre a couple of weeks ago, according to Dr Clinton’s notes, after Edmund Hewlett tried to kill himself using the same means as Mama Simcoe. Didn’t read the full record until I got back to the station and when I called to inquire further, Clinton was with another patient.”

“Yilmaz, I take it you did Hewlett’s file then? What can you add?”

“Nothing,” she stated plainly.

“I knew you wouldn’t read it -”

“There was nothing to read, look; most of what someone would reasonable assume had been in the file was either removed or never recorded to begin with. I did - with the permission of both Doctors Clinton and Howe - flip through some of Andre’s other patience’s records for reference. Andre is a note taker, the Hewlett file is the outlier, not the Simcoe one. Oh wait,” she paused, “there was actually something else. I think it might be relevant.” Clearing her throat, she continued, “Andre took yesterday off to help Anna Strong move her stuff out of her ex-husband’s apartment. Abigail was also there as well, as were Peggy Shippen, John Graves Simcoe, Jordan Akinbode, Caleb Brewster, Philomena Cheer, Edmund Hewlett and then Salah Strong, obviously.”

“You forget Selah Strong’s new bride-to-be.”

“Yeah, Major Najma Abboud.” Turing her attention back to Russo, whose eyebrows were raised as if to indicate suspicion, she added in a hiss “Mike, I swear to your God and my own if you make any kind of fucking reference-”

“Relax doll, I learn my lesson.”

“Clearly not sexism in the workplace,” Sanchez said under her breath.

“Right? You see what I have to deal with.”

Ben was embarrassed, he turned to the ADIC and thought to explain how tried even member of the task force was but was not given the chance to excuse their internal rivalries. If their behaviour was unbefitting of the FBI director’s presence as the inspector expected it was, Hamilton gave no indication of it.

“So they were all together at some point in the afternoon. I’ll make a few calls and find out what I can,” Hamilton said, having already begun to do so. “Out of curiosity, Inspector, how exactly does Hewlett factor into your working hypothesis? Is it simply his initial reaction to the crime scene?”

“No,” Ben said as he started to pace in front of the mock-up, now strewn with pictures, lines and notes written in his nearly illegible hand, “I had the pleasure of speaking to the third DeJong bartender, Caleb Brewster, directly about an hour ago when he came in to give a statement.” His gait quickened as he wondered why he had phrased that in such a way, though pleasure it truly was. He had spoken to the man as he would have any potential witness, and yet, in the course of twenty minutes, owing either to Caleb’s humour or Ben’s exhaustion, he found himself laughing as he agreed to go to what Caleb himself promised would likely be an evening of bad music. For the first time in years, Ben had weekend plans that he could pretend were not directly work-related. For the first time in years, he was excited about Saturday night.

“Caleb has something of an honour system set up during his weeknight shifts. He plays in a band called Culper Ring with Abraham Woodhull and Robert Townsend, and they use the bar to practice, finding it difficult to do in Woodhull’s garage for reasons relating to Japanese cartoons I am not sure I understand. On Tuesdays, the bar gets around 40 guests, most of them local to Setauket, some coming from the city to see the band play without having to pay a cover charge. Maybe.” He was rambling and he knew it. Hamilton was looking at him expectantly; Sanchez was chewing on the end of a pen. Sackett nodded. Braxton supressed a smile. Russo and Yilmaz were openly grinning at each other. Baker, for his part, looked as if he noticed nothing amiss. Later, Ben decided, when they had enough of a break to justify the whole team going out for drinks, he would by Baker an extra round. He earned it. Twice today, now that he thought on it. Maybe, Ben considered for a moment, Caleb would join them and they would all be charmed by him too.

No.

Ben surveyed his co-workers again. Excepting Sanchez who was assigned to him that afternoon on account of having been in the wrong corridor at the wrong time, they were all trained detectives. He could not risk subjecting whatever he hoped to find in Caleb to them. They would see it. With the exception of Baker, he worried they did already.

“Tallmadge?” Hamilton asked. Ben wondered how long he had left them in silence.

“Right, yes. The way the system works, and it did -up until last night- is that the patrons are free to get drinks themselves during a set, provided they recorded their consumption on their coasters. Native Setauketians explain the rule to outsiders and can be trusted to make sure it is enforced.”

“Sort of black market.”

“I suppose,” Ben admitted. “Anna Strong places both her beer and liquor orders on Wednesdays and as such takes an inventory at the start of that shift. She states that everything has always been accounted for. This morning however, in addition to the lost and found box and the entirety of its contents, several bottles had been stolen. Three flashes of wine and a hard cider that both Brewster and Ingram attest Strong only orders for Hewlett, who it also so happens, is the only one who drinks it.”

“Magner’s.” Sackett interjected. “I had a look at DeJong Tavern’s digital records for the past year. The spread sheets generated by their POS software confirms Brewster’s assertion.”

“Yes, and Miss Strong denies it. Here is where it gets interesting, boys. While I was questioning her on it, Anna Strong grew defensive, stating that she wouldn’t know if Hewlett was the only one who drank Magner’s. She certainly did not order it specifically for him. It had been on the menu since she began working there, and anyway, she had only really known Hewlett for two months. Having heard what she said she immediately started to back track.”

“Oh, shit.” “Wow.” “She pregnant?” “Classic GCM.” His subordinates responded simultaneously.

Ben cleared his throat and continued. “Hewlett’s visa expires in the summer, but I am hesitant to call this a Green Card Marriage for a number of factors.”

“Because we all know that Madame Smith would _never_ let that slide,” Russo said to general snickering.

“Less because of her mother than her father. Hewlett has been living in Judge Woodhull’s country estate since coming to America to pursue a PhD in Astrophysics. While I know that many of us have had hang ups in finding any record on him, Columbia was happy to hand over his student files. Perfect marks. Failed his dissertation. It doesn’t really add up. According to Woodhull, Hewlett surprised everyone when he extended his lease for an entire year, mentioning at the time that he would be moving his heretofore-unmentioned girlfriend into his small apartment. Not mentioning, however, that this girlfriend happened to be the daughter of the man who all but ruined the judge in a famous exposé.”

“William Smith,” Hamilton nodded with a slight smile. Ben had read the piece half a hundred times during the course of his studies at Yale. Hamilton seem to have as much to say on it as he did. Ben returned the nod as if he was accepting to dual of wits at a later date.

“He has another book coming out in November. I am inclined to question why an heir presumptive of a hereditary peer would be living in a 200 square foot apartment to begin with. Looking at social media, he seems to have no great love of this beautiful country of ours and up until mysteriously failing his dissertation and, Russo – attempting suicide?” Russo nodded. Tallmadge continued, “Hewlett had no intention of staying. I have a working theory, and of course, we will know more after we sweep Whitehall tomorrow, that his presence here may relate to Smith’s alleged questionable journalism practices.”

“That he could be using his own daughter as a spy, you mean?” Backer asked.

“Maybe. Something is going on that that makes me hesitant to say that Hewlett and Strong have a real relationship, or that their connection has anything to do with a Green Card whatsoever. Hewlett has yet to apply for a visa extension of any kind. How could he, under false pretence, living under the same roof as the State of New York’s chief justice, with the daughter of the city’s top prosecutor? Furthermore, if we are humouring their claims of love, why move Anna Strong into the same house as her high school sweetheart? Something is going on. In my opinion, it has either to do with the long standing Smith / Woodhull rivalry or the disappearance of Senator Arnold, which, I remind you all, happened on the same day that Hewlett and Strong moved in together, though we can’t restrict out search to the pair alone.

I think Arnold’s disappearance is part of a larger series of strangely interwoven relationships, many of which go back decades, some of which only go back six weeks or so. There is much about the main suspect I do not understand, and somehow there seems to be a series of lies being told around him to protect him-or whatever it is he is hiding.”

“Can I just say, I think it has something to do with Simcoe,” Sanchez said. New to the team and its youngest member, she had been fairly quiet up until this point. Both Ben Tallmadge and Alexander Hamilton motioned for her to continue. “He was pretty open in the interview about his childhood and everything Russo talked about, but he froze up when it came to talking about whatever Hewlett did when they were at school together, and he really seemed to be trying to defend his character, but couldn’t pull off the façade for long. I think also he may have a thing for Anna Strong. If that helps.”

“It does. I have my assumptions about that relationship as well. I feel that if these lies are going to crack, it will be along those fault lines. Since you seem to have a handle on this, tell me, Constable, have you ever worked undercover before?”

“I – no, sir.”

“Sackett and I set something up this afternoon with the DA and her daughter. Hamilton, I’ve already sent you an email. The rest of you aren’t going to like it, but the Smiths may need added surveillance and security in the coming weeks.”

“Forget the coming weeks, Ben,” Sackett said. Although Ben technically outranked him, the aging eccentric needed not address him with formality. He was himself the head of the NYPD’s IT Department, for Ben, something of a mentor and friend. “Hewlett is on this way to Brooklynn according to the trackers we placed on both his car and phone. This is going down now.”

“Alright, brief Sanchez on her role and take Russo and Yilmaz in the van with you as back up. Guys – were taking no precautions so get your vests and riot gear, okay?”

The two sergeants high-fived each other. They would be less excited when they discovered what he was actually requiring them to do and how long it might take, but that task had just been delegated to Sackett, who also earned a round on Ben the next time they all went out.

“Braxton, Backer, you are with me. Hamilton?”

The ADIC stood up. After requesting that copies of the files that had been discussed be sent to his office, he asked, “Has anyone spoken to the Woodhull’s yet? Do we know where Andre is being treated?”

“Richard and Abraham yes, Mary no.” Ben answered. “As for John Andre -”

“No one at the office knew or would otherwise say.”

“I’ll get one of my men on that and we will reconvene tomorrow morning, shall we say, 11? Should anything happen or should you learn anything of significance ring me straight away. I am a light sleeper and Eliza is used to it.” He paused. “Tallmadge, in your opinion, should I prepare back up?”

“At this point it is not necessary. The NYPD can take care of its own.”

“Then I wish you all the best of luck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You remember how back in chapter two Hewlett dramatically declared that he was not simply broke within his circles, he was destitute?
> 
> That was actually somewhat important and less hyperbolic than it seemed. See you soon.
> 
> (Comments and Kudos serve the sole purpose of making the writer smile at her email. Mine is connected to my student account and as you might be able to tell by my lack of recent activity, I am having a hell of a semester. You can do the thing, or not. Really I am just grateful so many of you are still here. Thanks for reading!)


	16. The Presumptive (Pt.2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hewlett confesses, Anna tempts fate, Simcoe feels wronged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, lovely faces. I think by this point you’d do better to ignore all of the promises I make about getting updates out. I have a full schedule this semester to contend with. Know that I miss you and think of you fondly in our time spent apart. ~
> 
> You may have noticed that I raised the rating to explicit – try not to get to excited, you may find yourselves just as disappointed as the figures to whom this first warning applies: sexual content, corporate corruption, infidelity, basic algebra, language (harsh and dead both), and _length!_ This may just be the longest chapter I have ever written. Hope you like Hewlett, and hope you enjoy!

Night had long since fallen before Edmund Hewlett found himself ringing the doorbell of the District Attorney. Hours before, after finding Mary Woodhull in a drug-induced coma on his bed and thus exchanging a few choice words with the sweet suburban mother whom he otherwise considered above reproach, he took a quick shower. The thirty minutes that elapsed between Mary leaving his apartment to rendezvous with her meretricious lover and his endeavour to do the same were filled with quiet fretting over the multitude of regular worries plaguing his mind despite the day’s events. Donning his best suit and taking a deep breath, Hewlett slowly made his way down the hall to ask yet another favour of the Woodhull’s au pair.

Nothing in Whitehall had changed since the day before, since the two years Hewlett had been renting from Richard Woodhull and likely, for decades prior to that; yet he felt lost in the hallway that he had so often travelled connecting his flat to the rest of the house. Everything seemed new now that the environment felt hostile. It had been the same way at his ancestral home, at boarding school, at universities on both sides of the Atlantic. It was the same sense he now had in Simcoe’s flat, Andre’s office, and, should the tavern ever reopen, he imagined it too would seem now foreign.

Hewlett could hear Abe’s biting criticism in his snores when he passed the room with the bed Mary could not force herself to lie in. They had been empty words from a worthless man that he had let open old wounds once more. He was not going home. He had none to speak of; it never actively bothered him before. Perhaps it had once. Once, when life had been filled by fine things, when the forces of fate were contented themselves with the proletariat. Anna reminded him that he had then allowed himself to dream of home in its second meaning, but she was now lost to him, and Whitehall was reduced to its walls. Hewlett knocked on every identical, unknown door. He would be gone in a year. The building and its residents, he was sure, would forget him the moment his lease expired – but though time would likely erase the names and faces and all of the other various places he had been acquainted with in the United States, he would remember the details of this particular hallway and its dozens of empty rooms from this day until his last. His search persisted for ten minutes before a door opened - two down from the one he was attempting.

The au pair’s expression seemed to match his mood. Tired, confused, yet determined. Her face confirmed his fears before she invited him into her small room; identical to all of the others save for the Haitian flag pinned up behind her bedposts, a poster hung over her desk explaining the English verb tenses and one of Abe Woodhull’s pitiful garage band covered in what Hewlett hoped were not lipstick stains taped to the backside of the door.

As she had that morning, Aberdeen tried to extract a price for the information she possessed.

He would have happily lent her his Jaguar for the entire weekend, but what she asked of him instead came as something of a surprise. An annoyance. A set back.

This was not to say that he would not have willingly met any expense in order to find his way back to his lover’s affections, but the au pair demanded time, which he had little of, and patience, of which there was less. To add to the offence, she had phrased her appeal for assistance in exchange for Ms. Smith’s address as something he felt could be easily and quickly seen to.

Namely, she asked him to advise her understanding of three algebraic word problems.

Initially, her request came as a relief. Half an hour into his impromptu lecture, however, he realized that Aberdeen required rather that he provide a crash course in what he considered basic maths. He had taught at the college level before, but always to students who had taken the subject out of keen interest rather than as a general education requirement. This was a challenge.

He stepped back, slowed down, and - caressing his temples as he let out an extended sigh - began to explain linear expressions in a single variable. Aberdeen took out a pen and - as she had done that same morning - seemed to record each word he spoke.

An hour later, Edmund Hewlett felt finally whole in Whitehall. He found himself smiling as his student correctly expressed the questions in her homework as the expressions of the functions and formulae he had explained. When she proved she was able to solve them, he was beaming, and not only because every known x value she found would bring him closer to the woman whom he had been dreaming of all the while.

“Aberdeen,” he asked when she finally closed her textbook, “might I yet trouble you for that address?”

“You are actually kind of nice when you need something,” she replied.

“I, ah – am I ever mean?” he asked, taken aback.

“Jordan says it is because you were raised in a bubble.”

“I really wasn’t,” he replied dismissively.

“Look, we’re cool, right? If I pay you, can you do this more often? The teaching? You are good at it.”

He was, and he missed it. He missed discussing mathematics in general. He missed discussions that were not cloaked in code. He missed the innocence of problems that contained solutions. He missed feeling as though he had arrived at, or was leading someone to, the right answer. He missed his righteousness.

“I would do so gladly at the price of your friendship,” he offered, “but it is after seven and I really must be on my way. Tomorrow - or whenever you have time - I would be more than happy to look at your syllabus with you and devise a tutoring plan.”

Aberdeen nodded, and for the first time truly smiled at him in the year since having made his acquaintance. He did not have time to return it before she started with another series of demands.

“Slick your ‘air back and take off your tie. Unbutton your shirt a little, you are looking like, ‘ow you say? They come to your ‘ouse and ask if you know about Jesus?”

Hewlett stared at her blankly. He had never met a Jehovah’s Witness in tailored Armani, and might have been more inclined towards conversion if he had. However, having just learned that this aspect his character were debated by people he had assumed he had been on friendly terms with had him shaken enough that he complied himself with most of her advice without comment or question.

“Better?”

“Your ‘air, do you need gel for it? I ‘ave.”

“Anna prefers it like this.” He smiled as her name left his lips, recalling how it felt to have her hands amusing themselves with his otherwise dull, dark locks.

“Yes but, you are ‘aving! Wait” she crawled over to where he was seated on the far end of her bed, ran two fingers through his hair and in a small but hard yank produced a number of greys. When she placed them into his hand, it caused Edmund Hewlett’s head to ache more than it did immediately after Aberdeen’s rather unseemly gesture. She claimed in her defence for having so rudely disfiguring him that Ms. Smith already thought that he looked a bit too old for her daughter. If this was being nice, Hewlett though, he has less of a problem being thought of as mean than he did minutes before.

He stared at the strands of hair in his open palm, wondering if Anna had noticed them and been too kind (or embarrassed on his behalf) to say anything, or if the room had simply been too dark. He thought to have it dyed but due to a problem he had yet to discover would have neither the time nor the means to do so in the coming months. By summer, the whole of his hair would shake its colour completely; owing to an almost all-consuming stress but allowing him to look more like a helpless fashion victim that the perpetrator of one of the largest market manipulation schemes in human history, as he would duly become. Part of keeping up appearances was achieved be design, at least half owed itself to dumb luck.

Sleeking his hair back for one of the last times that doing so would serve a purpose, he asked again for the address where Anna Strong was staying. Aberdeen said he ought to think about buying chocolate and flowers. She was stalling. He could not figure out why. After all, he was nice when he wanted something.

He had been reduced to begging by the time Aberdeen told him -with an exaggerated look of guilt- that she did not know it, not exactly. She had driven his car earlier and the address was in the navigation system. She chided that it surprised her that someone who seemed to know so much about technology and mechanics had not realized that it would be.

“I’m not thinking clearly, I fear,” Hewlett said in parting through clenched teeth.

“Then it must be love.”

 

* * *

 

An hour later Edmund arrived in Brooklyn with a speeding ticket and a heart full of short-lived hope. His $50 withdrawal request had been declined by two ATMs; a third refused to return his card and advised him to phone his banking institution. It was close to nine in the evening, and he would not be able to get anyone on the phone until morning.

Instead he tried to ring the man he had a very strong inkling might be responsible. Finding the line busy, he sent _Simhoe_ a text reading simply _WTF?!?_ , noting the contact name and remembering that they had been friends that morning. Muttering a few expletives and the actual surname of the man who mistook him for a fool, he counted the money in his wallet and walked into a drug store, emerging twenty minutes later with a bouquet of red carnations and a box of dark chocolate truffles decorated for a holiday that had weeks since passed.

When he reached the District Attorney’s street, he found parking on the far corner and decided to take it, believing a short walk would help him gather his thoughts.

He was mistaken.

When a careworn, dark-eyed woman answered the door in her pyjamas, he wished he had kept his tie on. At least that way he might stand a chance of hiding the flowers behind his back and asking if she had heard the Good News. Anything, he figured, would be an improvement on the monosyllabic, repetitious _ah_ on which he chocked.

“You must be Edmund,” Nancy Smith said without a hint of inflection.

“I … I thought it might be late, but I saw the light was on.”

“Are you trick or treating?” she asked dryly, eying the chocolate.

“Ms. Smith I -”

The door would have closed had his foot not halted its progress.

“Mr. Hewlett, let me make this simple. If you don’t evacuate the premise immediately I will have you arrested for trespassing.”

Hewlett met her eyes. Mirroring her tone, he responded, “I’m here to see Anna.”

“The 79th precinct is two minutes away Mr. Hewlett.”

“I am here to speak your daughter, Madame. No threat of arrest or humiliation is going to deter me from my objective. Please, might I come in?”

“Are you threatening _me_ , Mr. Hewlett?” Anna’s mother swallowed as jerked her first chin forward, causing the second to disappear in its attempt to follow.

“That is the furthest from my intention, Ms. Smith,” he insisted. “However, I simply must speak to my fiancé. Take my words how you will.” Admittedly, this was getting off to a bad start. Handing over the bouquet, he attempted to start over, “Um, these are for you.”

She eyed the flowers without extending her hand to accept them.

“And here I was under the impression that your confidence was lacking,” she mocked. “Carnations.”

“I assure you it is not conceit that brings me here with a second-rate offering, I-”

“It is not the flowers. It is not _just_ the flowers.” She rolled her eyes. Then, meeting his again, Nancy Smith spoke slowly and softly as if trying to tell him a secret, “Please leave. While you still can, please, just go.”

 

* * *

 

“What the fuck is she doing?” DS Yilmaz cursed at no one in particular. She sat in the back of a surveillance vehicle parked adjacent to the Smith residence with two of her colleagues. While Sackett fiddled with the equipment and Russo checked in with Sanchez inside via the constable’s earpiece, the younger of the two detectives sergeant continued to complain. “Why hasn’t she invited him inside? Why didn’t we make her wear a goddamn wire?”

“That is easily said in hindsight. Tell me Heidi, would you have volunteered to ask the boss lady to do so?” Russo scuffed, kicking the riot gear left to rot. He would have preferred to be in the vanguard than in a van, and as soon as the he asked the question he regretted not having asked the DA himself. At least then, he figured, he might see a bit of action, if only in the form of an irate prosecutor.

Sackett explained as they had smoked and played cards to bide time while they waited for the target to arrive, that Nancy Smith and her daughter had mounted a protest that rivalled the Boston Tea Party when he and Tallmadge had come to install the cameras and microphones throughout the house. The two women had been forced into compliance when Ms. Strong had all but confessed to the inauthenticity of her liaison with Hewlett. Ms. Smith, after arranging Anna’s immunity in exchange for their cooperation, agreed to speak with Hewlett under the guise of simply being a concerned mother. The hope was that over the course of the conversation something would slip that would allow for the Scotsman’s detention. Russo had his doubts. Hewlett had left almost nothing of a paper trail; nothing the NYPD was able to access. In his twenty years on the force, he was one of the smoothest criminals he had ever seen. A public figure with no public record, Hewlett had convinced a man whom he had stabbed and scared to defend the incident on his behalf. To the sergeant’s own mind, and that of his long-time partner, they would need far more than two reluctant spies, a few microphones and and a rookie cop to break him.

_Assuming_ , Sackett had said to the objections both Russo and his partner had raised, _that Hewlett is not already broken._

_He is arrogant._ Tallmadge told them. _He’s trying to pull off immigration fraud in the home of the state’s Chief Judge with the daughter of the city’s District Attorney. It is obvious, it is dangerous, and it seems like he is using it as a distraction._

Yet Hewlett did not look broken. Or arrogant. Not from where they sat. Desperate perhaps, painfully determined. Russo thought about his two little girls at home sleeping in their beds, wondering what he might do if some fellow tried to use one of his princesses one day in the same way that Edmund Hewlett was using Anna Strong. He then wondered if the DA still kept a registered handgun in her purse.

“Yilmaz make a fair point,” Sackett said, clearly agitated. “We’ve left too much up to human error. Russo, you want to take a walk around?”

Russo shrugged and reached for his ballistic vest.

“No, I think your silhouette will do the trick. Only Nancy need see you. If we give Hewlett reason for suspicion the ruse will fail and we may lose our only shot.”

Shrugging again, Russo asked if he should at least bring his service weapon. “If it makes you feel more like a man,” Yilmaz teased.

For his part, Nathaniel Sackett wished that Ben had gifted him with Braxton and Backer, though Russo and Yilmaz were better to have in the case of a hostage situation. The Jersian left without a sound and his partner split her gaze between his movements and the footage from the camera hidden under the wooding awning of Nancy Smith’s doorway. Sackett checked in with Sanchez once more, advising her to stand ready. They had never worked together before, and she seemed nervous about her role. In the end, Sackett only trusted his machines. When a red light started blinking, he told Yilmaz to put on the headset and monitor Ms. Strong. He checked the cameras to make sure the two outside agents had taken their positions, closed his eyes, and waited for the programme to begin.

 

* * *

 

“You wrong me, Madam,” he said mirthlessly.

She was humbled. She was humiliated. If anyone had been _wronged_ , as John put it, it was she herself.

Anna had taken upwards of fifty selfies over the course of the evening before finding two she felt could be rendered seductive with the right filter. After an hour of making minor adjustments to light, camera angle, expression and appearance, she spent more than thirty minutes looking at her exposed figure on three different editing apps, finding new flaws the instant the existing ones had been erased. The glossies she flipped though while waiting on checkout lines promised that every woman in their target demographic preformed the same feats in order to render a single image worthy of sharing. Anna had sent two.

Still, John Graves Simcoe did not seem appreciative or sound even mildly impressed.

She wondered if the running water did anything to disguise the nature of the conversation she was having from the officer she assumed was still lurking outside the bathroom door, or if it masked the sadness in her voice as disappointment.

Her advances had offended him. It hurt. Perhaps the pain in her chest was the accumulation of everything that had transpired since she had woken up that morning next to the man she had then been convinced she would share her life with; perhaps his rival’s rejection stung all on its own.

John failed to fall into a trap she had laid in the form of her naked body, and now he was on the phone demanding to know what exactly she took him for. He had a beating heart like any other man, a heart wanting only of love. Anna was being unkind, unfair, and frankly, it was unwarranted. She agreed with the assessment. She wanted to apologise. She wanted to retort. She wanted to be wanted, even if it was, -as he put it - _frankly unwarranted_.

“I’m ashamed of my conduct. You were being kind to me, thinking only of my comfort and welfare and I responded with, oh John, I thought – you’ve always, I thought perhaps you might be open to -”

“Again you mistake me,” his anguish was audible.

Anna’s lip trembled. She knew she had taken things too far. For reasons she failed to understand, the joint task force had wanted to examine Simcoe’s supposed infatuation with her as part of their deeper investigation into the primary suspect. Tallmadge had asked simply for her to speak with him. He had not gone so far as to say flirt. She had sent nudes. Anna had hoped that the pictures would eventually make their way to Edmund, the way the pictures of his jovial celebration upon his release had made its way to her. He had not bothered to call and tell her he had survived the ordeal. He had not bothered to ask if she was all right, after she had lost the bar and her dreams along with it.

No one had.

Not when it would have made a difference.

“In my defence I can only say that I was still reeling from news of what is said to have happened last night in my tavern, from my sudden unemployment. I’m aggravated by my fiancée’s arrest, and you, with your text, you simply remind me of all that I’ve lost - particularly of Edmund himself.”

“Edmund?” The running bathwater did nothing to dilute his disgust, though, she marked, whether it was with Hewlett or herself he had left open to interpretation.  

John had sent her a text hours before to ask if she was alright. It was difficult for her to imagine him, for all of his cruel words and cold stares, extending her fiancé a genuine curtesy, but that now seemed to inform his motivation. In the original message, he mentioned that he had spoken to _Oyster_ who was _a mess_ because he could not reach her. _My concern is purely that of your safety and well-being,_ John had written. _I understand perhaps better than most what a chore it is to speak to our mutual acquaintance, but if you provide me word, I should be happy to pass it along, provided, of course, that be your wish._

Anna noted the use of _mutual acquaintance_ rather than _your fiancé_ or _my friend,_ as though he were unable to accept either of the more suitable distinctions. Perhaps he was trying to distance himself from the man whom he had just referred to using a private term of endearment, perhaps his aim was to not use Edmund’s name at all, that Anna may sooner forget it for her own sake.

She wished she could.

She wished she had called John earlier.

She wished he still wanted her the way she had assumed he always would.

She _really_ wished she had not responded to his texts by sending him photographs of herself in the bath, and yet, she wanted him to keep berating her for it. His still-high voice was dark and dangerous when he was in a foul mood. Anna could listen to it all night. She looked at the showerhead. If Ben Tallmadge and his team wanted a show, she would give them one. She told him that Edmund was twice the man he was and turned up the water pressure.

“Are you -”she heard him shutter after a moment of her taking comfort in the hard, hot stream as it danced with his high, hurt vocals. It was as if she had again found a way to insult his newfound delicate sensibilities. “What is it with the women of this town?” John demanded rhetorically.

“Women?” Anna inquired. She turned off the faucet and sat up in the hall-full bathtub, the pool around her growing colder with each moment he hesitated to respond.

 

* * *

 

“Understand my position, Mr. Hewlett,” Nancy Smith continued through a creaked door half-crushing Hewlett’s toes. “I knew only three things about you prior to your standing with a foot in my door, trying to bribe your way in to my home with a two-week-old Valentine’s Day gift and a gas-station bouquet. You stabbed a mentally instable individual in a bar fight; were arrested for the murder of Senator Benedict Arnold, and most damningly of all, have been for the past several months using my daughter. As I am sure you understand, I have no interest in learning more, and I would appreciate it very, very much if you accepted that there is nothing for you here. You let that opportunity pass. Leave my doorway and my daughter before you can do any more damage. She has been crying all night. ”

Her words stung but did little to deter him. Edmund Hewlett would have traded his soul for another moment with Anna were Mephistopheles to materialize with said offer.

“Damage? Ms. Smith, with respect, I have reason to believe that there has been foul play. I have been trying to get in touch with dear Anna since getting my mobile back. If the blame lie with me than so be it, but show me the mercy of allowing me to attempt to right the wrong that was suffered in my name.”

“Such as lunching at The Newsroom with a few of your friends? Laughing jovially whilst she wept?”

His heart stopped. Anna was in the Bye-Week Group Chat with all of the others. She must have thought the absolute worst of him. He muttered the name of the man who had suggested they order a $200 bottle of port. Without pausing to respond, the DA continued, “Don’t get me wrong, I know how hard it is to get a reservation, I myself have been trying for months, but still.” She turned and yelled out to her maid to fetch her cell. When a girl appeared with the requested device, Ms. Smith showed him the photograph Simcoe had asked Robert Townsend to take of their send off to John Andre. “This is the only news she has heard of you all day since your arrest. You don’t seem as if you were at all concerned with getting in touch with her. She went to City Hall in an attempt to obtain a marriage licence in a misguided attempt to help you, Mr. Hewlett, after you’d form my understanding all but confessed to murder. Anna was so worried for your safety that even she sought out my help. Rare, almost worrisome,” she handed him the phone. He stared at the picture and sighed.

“Ah, I, it’s not -” _what she thought?_ Hewlett stopped himself. Taking time out in the afternoon to mock a friend for taking measures to gain control of his drinking problem was probably worse than whatever assumptions Anna’s mother had drawn.

“I’ve known Jordan for years,” she said, taking her mobile back. “He managed to ring my daughter. So did John. You could have used either of their devices to call her if you believe there is something amiss wit yours. You won’t convince me that Anna was at the forefront of your mind at any point today, Sir.”

He did not know what stung more, the point she was making or that someone whom Anna had accurately depicted as having absolutely no interest in meeting him was on a first name basis with Akinbode and Simcoe. Maybe Akinbode had mentioned once over a quaint tea session that he thought Hewlett had been raised in a bubble. Maybe Ms. Smith was direct enough to have asked Simcoe about one of a few of his small, faint facial scars and the demon had provided an honest account. Jordan and John, he thought. They did not even refer to one another with such familiarity. After the surprise of hearing his friends referred to by their Christian names lifted, he implored, “Please, call me Edmund.”

“I don’t think I shall.”

“Ma’am, I -”

“Please leave, Mr. Hewlett,” she pleaded. “Anna has finally ceased with her crying. I can’t – we can’t, can’t you simply leave us in peace?”

The door crushed against the foot he had propping it open. He winced. The pressure was released. The door swung open and Ms. Smith half-emerged, placing the full force of her burly frame between Edmund and the interior. Her expression failed to match her posture; with her quivering lower lip, she looked weak, sad and small. It was familiar. It was most unfortunate. The woman was terrified. Hewlett stepped back, trying to recognize that to her he was the sociopath who had spoken to Inspector Tallmadge, the man accused of murder, and not the socially awkward gentleman scholar, so easily bent by Anna’s attention. He questioned if her view could be altered were he able to simply explain why he had needed to meet with Simcoe that afternoon, how his promise to provide for and prioritise his fiancée’s pleasures justified his means. Love, he mused, could justify anything and required no defence.

Then perhaps she already knew. Perhaps she was simply attempting to force him into confessing himself on camera. Edmund Hewlett had never known reciprocal devotion of any kind, but he knew the rules of the game he now assumed the District Attorney was playing better than she likely dared to suspect.

“I, Ms. Smith I never intended to give your daughter any reason to grieve. To put it plainly … I love her. I’m sorry for what seems to have been a pattern of poor judgment on many fronts but I assure you, Anna has been, Anna is - she is without equal. I understand that I could never begin to deserve her, for no man could.”

“You’re right. Find yourself another fake fiancée.”

“Fake? Ms. Smith, that is quite enough. I have nothing but the most honourable intentions-”

“Of staying in America to finish your degree? She told me everything.”

“I’ll fly out tomorrow if it pleases her.”

“With what money, Mr. Hewlett?”

She looked down at the admittedly pathetic offerings he had brought to her alter. His eyes followed and he asked himself the same question. He should really try think before making lofty declarations. One day, he was certain; such talk would get him into a heap of trouble if it had not already.

Without warning, Nancy Smith joined Edmund Hewlett on the front porch. He found himself crushed by her tight embrace. “You won’t leave?” she asked, her voice cracking in a whisper. “Stay or go. If you’ve any sense you’ll take the latter option. We have eyes. I can’t hold them off for much longer.” He could feel her body tremble as they touched. Nancy Smith thought him a killer. She was petrified. Suddenly, he was as well. Her eyes justified the paranoia he was attempting to suppress when they met his own. He was now certain there was a police presence in the vicinity. He had likely walked into a trap. Ms. Smith had been kind, for Anna’s sake, if not his own. Hewlett imagined that her reprimands were repeated warnings he had failed to heed. Still, if there was even a chance of reuniting with his beloved, however temporary, he had to take it. Whatever his other problems, due process would sort them out in the morning. Surely, preserving the hope and happiness Anna had offered was worth another night in jail.

“No, Ma’am,” he answered softly. “I have to see my dear Anna. I have to apologise for any tears shed on my behalf. That was never my intent. I love her. I pray that you know that I make my intentions towards your daughter clear and from the deepest and strictest motives of respect. Please. I care not for the risk this may place upon me, I assure you I offer no threat -”

Shaking her head, she cut him off at full volume. “Come in if you insist on making your case.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

When the door was closed behind them, he nodded at her knowingly. The District Attorney forced a small laugh. “Imagine, a prince deferring to me. _Ma’am_ ,” she scoffed. “You must truly be desperate. I’ll take the chocolates.”

They were Anna’s favourite. He knew from the experiences of bringing her multiple tokens and trinkets when he would visit her at the bar. Observing which she seemed to favour. He wondered how long he had been in love with her before realising it. Six weeks felt far too short.

“Those are for -” he started.

“Oh! I know I shouldn’t. Look at me. I’ve been attempting to diet since my son was born and all it has ever brought me is a constant headache that can only be cured by sugar. Maybe I am doing things wrong. No matter. You ought to know that Anna’s sweet tooth is inherited and the longer you stay together the – oh sorry, did you want one?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, hoping that unwarranted self-deprecation was not another feature of the bloodline. Anna was stunning, and if her mother served as an indication she would be every bit as beautiful in thirty years’ time. Women, for all of their mystery and allure were ultimately ridiculous in the manner they scrutinized themselves.

Nancy Smith pressed another praline into her mouth. Seemingly able to derive his unspoken fears from his expression, she said briskly after taking a third, “I hate myself for it. Look at what you have to look forward too.”

“I do,” he tried to smile. “Ah, look forward to getting to know you, Ms. Smith. Truly.”

“You shouldn’t,” she snorted back. “And you won’t. I’ve asked you into my home on the sole ground that someone on the street lingered a bit too long in the shadows for my comfort. We’ll have a coffee together, you’ll offer your defence and once I’ve destroyed it you’ll exit through the back as to not create anymore unwanted attention. As I’ve stated Anna has gone up for the evening. I refuse to let you disturb her peace.”

Hewlett’s heart sank. He ought to have anticipated this.

He followed her down a long, straight hallway, Persian carpets atop dark wooden floors, heavy furniture borrowed from another century. He could have been in any of the places he had once dwelled. He wondered if the interiors of all homes looked like this and if it mattered that memory destroyed the individual details of the places he had been. Ms. Smith brought him into a dimly lit study and took a seat in an armchair, gesturing that he join her in its twin. Edmund’s eyes danced over the assortment of books, all of them looking to be legal in their nature. “Richard and Rebecca and William and I were all at university together,” she said as if that was explanation enough for her apparent lack of interest in subjects not pertaining to her profession. “Ah-” he started, before realizing that his gaze had landed on a photograph of his host with his landlord. He tried to recall what sorts of books Judge Woodhull read at home. They had discussed the Bard and the Bible, he had overheard Richard reading fairy tales to his grandson Thomas, but Hewlett had no recollection of what else sat on the shelves of his study. He wondered if he had never looked or had never much cared.

Ms. Smith called out to her maid once again, a girl with olive skin and curly hair who looked to be scarcely out of high school and asked her to make a pot of coffee. When the girl returned with the District Attorney’s request, Nancy asked her if she wanted to stay and have a cup with her and her guest. The girl politely declined. “Her mother was Anna and Hank’s governess,” she remarked to Hewlett when her servant had left. “Amusing how our lives have turned out. She raised my children and now I am raising hers. Josephine doesn’t just work and live under my roof, Mr. Hewlett. I am paying her way through college in addition to her salary and board. I am not sure what Anna has lead you to believe, but the Smiths are not in want of charity.”

“I was hardly under the impression that you were,” he replied, looking around the room, the few areas not covered in leather bound books were furnished lavishly with early American antiques and hand-drawn historical maps of both the city and of local waterways.

“It is rather curious, I feel as if I’ve been here before,” he remarked, making an unconscious estimation on the value of Ms. Smith’s possessions.

“Well, she drew a number of those. Anna. Talented girl. Sells herself short.”

“No one could argue that, Ma’am,” he grinned.

“And yet here we are.”

“Ma’am, I – I simply hate secrets within families. When I asked your daughter for her hand, it was not my intention to fall in love, nor was any of it my idea so to speak – and truth be told I was opposed to the whole of it from the beginning. I, I am still. Opposed to it. Since I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Anna, I’ve been in love with her. I understand how very ridiculous this may seem, given any number of factors, but I’ve never loved before, and now I fear the idea of wedding for any other reason is beneath me, and possibly outside of my immediate means, as I fear you can tell. I’m not here out of reliance, I hate the idea that Anna should be asked to lie on my behalf. It is how we came together, and as much as I would prefer otherwise it seems that fact cannot be ignored. I suppose that is what you’d rather hoped to hear me admit.”

“Do you smoke?” she responded, offering him a cigarette from a silver-plated etui.

“Anna has asked me to quit.”

“You should. It is probably for the better,” she said as she lit one. “Though I’ll be the first to admit, kid, you picked a hell of a week to do it.” After a long inhale, she returned to the subject of their shared interest. “I’m proud of her. Said she would quit on New Year’s Eve and hasn’t touched one since. I lasted all of three days. She is stubborn though, sets her mind to something -”

Hewlett smiled.

“But you know all of this. You’ve dated my daughter for what has it been, hmm? Six weeks?”

“I understand you apprehension, Ma’am. Our courtship has been rather short, but that hardly alters the strength of my sentiment.”

“Yet it seems you have invested quite a bit to buy her affections in return.”

Hewlett stopped stirring milk and sweetener into his coffee.

“I – I have. I cannot deny that either.”

“So tell me then, how exactly does a Scottish Lord wind up penniless in Setauket with designs on marrying a bartender for legal status?”

“Please, Ma’am. I have no designs on marrying your daughter for a Green Card, as I’ve attempted to explain. If Anna were to bid me farewell, I would find the means to leave this,” he paused, trying to recall if he had ever heard an American speak of their country without simultaneously singing its praise, “this, this … _glorious_ land tomorrow, as I have also stated. My only motivation toward her is love.”

“But that is not her only motivation.”

“I fear not,” he admitted. “I can only hope to eliminate the problems in her life preventing her from accepting my proposal based solely on -”

“You have a lot of nerve suggesting that any blame rests on her shoulders.”

To his knowing, he had not suggested anything of the sort. Offended, he protested her assertion, “I’m not. Does it somehow come off as though I am? Madame, my problems are my own. I am here - ah, in America - because I failed to defend my dissertation and subsequently failed to then end my own life. Circumstantial evidence landed me in interrogation this morning, and poor judgement forces me to confess to you that my designs towards your daughter were no always as pure as they now are. I’ve been changed. By Anna. By the affection she has shown me. I wouldn’t – I simply couldn’t – place her in a situation that might later serve to her detriment. That said, I won’t call off our engagement because of your disapproval, nor will I marry her for my own convenience. Please, allow me to speak to her.”

“Mr. Hewlett, do you think it wise to confess to attempted fraud? Anna did request a marriage licence today.”

“No. But I fancy myself an honest man. I suppose that is my great fault. I’m not a con-artist, nor a killer, kidnapper, whatever the current angle the investigation is pursuing might be. I’m far from perfect, but I am a gentleman and a child of God, and hardly the monster you’d see me cast as. I love your daughter. That is the whole of why I am here. That is why I hope to one-day call her my wife. I believe, mostly, her motivations mirror my own.”

The District Attorney barely looked at him when he spoke. He followed her eyes around the room, noting where hers rested.

“You know what this is, don’t you?”

“I am afraid so.”

“And yet you persist.”

“DA or not, you are the mother of the woman I love, I’ll answer anything you ask honestly and to the best of my ability.”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let Anna know you stopped by if you answer my question to my full satisfaction, bearing in mind that all of your personal, criminal and financial records have already been subpoenaed from your bank and your embassy.”

Hewlett’s heart stopped. He recalled that Nancy Smith had mockingly called him prince when she had invited him inside. It was over. The NYPD already knew, or soon would. It was too late to ring a barrister, and he was too invested in his latest scheme to consider retreat.

He attempted to bargain. “Madame, I will tell you anything you wish to know provided that this conversation and the papers that support my claims remain confidential.”

“I have no intent on making any of this public. Or are you specifically referring to the fact that you’ve clearly not disclosed the extent of your personal wealth to Anna?”

“My personal …” Hewlett shook his head. Perhaps they knew nothing. “At present, as you may well know from your … espionage, I have less than $2,000 in my bank account and no way to access it, Ms. Smith. Whatever factors you imagine being in my possession are works of fiction, some of which I am forced to admit I helped to construct. I inherited nothing from my parents when I came of age - contrary to popular myth, and it seems now that I never will.”

“Not counting your various businesses, land rights and estates, your father’s estimated wealth alone is somewhere in the range of £90 - £100 million. Your uncle has no heir, and his title -”

“Will go to my eldest sister and her husband. I spent myself out of an inheritance, though not in the way many assume. That is not to say, Ms. Smith, that I am in any way incapable of providing your daughter with the life she dreams of, nor should you consider me to be so. I ask your discrepancy only in respect to my father’s legacy. I … do not imagine that I can fully convey what it might mean for the thousands in our employ should, well, any part of the role I played be made public.”

“Secrets destroy families, no?”

“Is that a threat, Ma’am?”

“Why don’t you tell me your story, and I’ll tell you what you personally have to fear from me,” she smiled. “Cigarette?”

 

* * *

 

Nothing resembling normalcy had ever found a place in Edmund Hewlett’s early childhood. He lived on a large estate but spent most of his time confined to the few palace rooms that UNESCO did not consider worthy of World Heritage status. Then again, he amended - considering how much trouble he had been in when he tried to recreate the night sky on his bedroom ceiling - perhaps the family quarters were of equal merit but had been neglected in the £12 tour.

He had taken it once or twice. A portrait of an uncle - who supposedly lived with them but whom he had never personally met - greeted the guests upon arrival. Pictures of his parents, grandfather, and four hundred years of other people with whom he shared a surname followed. It lasted for about an hour and ended in a gift shop where for £40 one could purchase a decorative plate with the family crest. He never recalled eating of such a dish, and wondered why the tableware used upstairs was so comparatively dull. A young man behind a glass counter advised that the people who purchased such plates existed only to be displayed in glass cabinets. Edmund assumed for a long time that everyone else must also live on a World Heritage Site, remembering that his parents had a plate of their own commemorating the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Diana Spencer. They had been in attendance. He only knew this because the family’s cook had shown him an old photograph in a glossy magazine.

Most of what he had known about his parents came from such photographs. He hardly saw them otherwise. His father worked in Edenborough managing the family’s business interests and his mother had an odd sort of unpaid position that involved educating world leaders about the AIDS epidemic. It always troubled young Edmund that these world leaders seemed to be the only people in the world they lead not to read the daily newspapers. Or perhaps they did. Perhaps they only read the glossy ones that included photographs of the more predominant members of the Hewlett family.  

Nearly every gathering in memory started with a press junction. The family would be told what to wear and how to stand by a number of people who supposedly worked for them but gave them orders all the same, forming Edmund’s basic understanding of representative democracy; something, he admitted, which never much evolved beyond that initial assessment. The family would pretend to do something domestic for two minutes whist reporters were let in to photograph them. Then, they would walk a few meters to the next arranged scene and engage in another pantomime, and then another. Two months later when the photographs were published - in the kinds of newspapers read by world leaders who were not aware of the AIDS epidemic and servants who were – Edmund would read that they had been celebrating Christmas. _Ah!_ he would think.

Sometimes his parents were in residence during the holiday season as it appeared on most calendars. Sometimes they remembered that his birthday fell on the December Christmas of churches and peasants. Sometimes while in residence, they even feigned interest in their children’s lives and inquire as to their goings on. His older sister attended boarding school abroad – something Edmund would later be disappointed to learn meant only a few hundred kilometres to the south. The twins were then being brought up in a nursery in a building that cost £20 to tour. It was nice to see them all, even if the lack of attendants left them with little to discuss.

For the first ten years of his education, Edmund did not get to go away to school as other children did. Instead, having done something as a toddler that made everyone assume he was wonderfully clever, he was educated at home by private tutors brought from universities. This much, at least, he recognized was odd. He saw even at the time that it made him odd by relation, that most children did not spend hours debating scholars on the applications of probabilistic combinatorics. He was isolated enough to envy the outside world of which he had nothing beyond a textbook understanding.

The summer when he was fourteen, all of that changed.

Edmund woke up and - being unable to find his tutor - decided to skip breakfast and his morning lessons, which had evidently been cancelled without anyone bothering to inform him. Instead, he went on a horseback ride. He was unable to enjoy it, fretting the entire time over the trouble he would be in when his tutor discovered he was gone. He tried to invent the grounds which might excuse him his adolescence, but his lies and half-truths would remain unspoken. All of his professors had been dismissed the night prior.

When he returned to the sables two hours later he found his father waiting for him. Edmund lunged into something between apology and explanation that his father did not seem to hear. Instead, he was pulled into a tight embrace the moment he dismounted. Young Edmund found this odd in and of itself, given that there were no cameras and it was neither the yuletide of the first or second estate.

Edmund Hewlett IV, that is to say, the weeping father of the thoroughly confused younger Edmund who was not accustom to open displays of emotion, was something of a maverick. Born sixteen minutes after his twin brother into the same privilege and wealth but without an official title (though in time everyone would come to call him Lord as a term of endearment) he had made his way mirroring the actions his brother took in politics in the private sector. Specifically, as it is relevant to our tale, this meant investing the whole of the family fortune in green energy projects decades before they ever became profitable.

If left to the forces of time alone, the Hewlett family, all of the companies they owned and all of these companies’ subsidiaries; all of the charities the underwrote; all of the tenants living in public housing on the family’s lands, and in private housing supplied for their employees at a reduced rate would benefit from his initiatives. But it was 1994, and before time could be allowed to continue, debts had to be paid.

The lives, homes and jobs of thousands of people, including the two Edmunds locked in a tense, teary embrace in the family’s stables hinged on a single failing enterprise. _If I declare bankruptcy_ , his father explained, _I will be unable to further secure the loans for our family’s work to continue_.

_Then don’t,_ the younger Edmund had replied. _Take me to the city. Show me your books. There must be a solution to all of this._

Edmund V had spent his short life in the company of numbers. He spoke their language. He took their advice. The solution they spoke of was one his sainted father would have never himself chosen. The numbers ruined any chance the two men might have otherwise had of mutual respect, but they saved the family. In name, if nothing else.

The solution was ignoble, but it worked. After having his father clandestinely sign the business over to him to avoid legally having to declare bankruptcy, Edmund terminated a number of low skilled workers, shuffled executives, and moved funds from charitable works to their banker’s coffers with a few strokes of a pen. He had no skill in business, and looked at the figures before him blind to everything else. Edmund spent an entire summer in the capitol, failing to fully understand despite his father’s protests that he was ruining lives. _And saving more_ , he would scoff in reply, not really believing in his solution or himself.

By the summer’s end, however, time had largely proved Edmund’s numbers right. His father appeared on the cover of Forbes, credited for saving a substantial part of the UK economy form downturn, and finally getting proper credit for the way in which he merged his business ideas with his humanitarian ideals. He was hailed as a hero, and although he never spoke of his admiration, Edmund did truly idolize his father. Despite the setback, the man had taken measures since the onset of his career to use his wealth to help those in need, to fund the development of green technology and to otherwise improve the world in ways he thought he could.

Eventually the world caught up to him.

Eventually, however, was not in time to save Edmund’s trust fund. As with the majority of everything else he possessed as a teenager, he had gambled, doubled, and reinvested back it into the family’s various businesses, which by the time he was twenty were all individually earning enough to pay their own debts. It did not matter much to Edmund. After all, at the time he had been under the assumption that he would personally inherit most of what his father and uncle had worked to build.

“Which is not to say that I would not have taken the same actions had I then known what to expect from my life’s own trajectory,” he clarified to the woman who with any luck would one day be his mother in law.

Nancy Smith’s eyes darted around the room, always landing for a moment on the same places but never, he noted, directly on him. “Isn’t it yours still? All of it?”

“Before I went to school – ah, boarding school. Private tutors, which I only understood after the fact to have been a luxury, were no longer in question - as our household had to make a number of reductions. I – that is, my father and I, signed the no longer failing accounts back into his name. What could not be saved I took as a personal financial hit and made adjustments to my standards as not to go into debt.”

“Standard of living, Christ! You were fourteen.”

“Well, fifteen by the time these adventures had fully ended, but that is sort of the point, isn’t it? None of this can ever be made public. Understand, whatever your opinion of me personally, Ms. Smith, my family houses, feeds and employs thousands of innocent people who ought not to have the future of their livelihoods brought into question. Were my father’s reputation to be tarnished by the revelation that he isn’t half the businessman many consider him to be, the results could be disastrous even today. I fear there is nothing I could do to help, even if I were to be given the chance.”

“Why wouldn’t you be?”

“My father, among many others, thinks me a monster. I fear I cannot defend myself against this criticism. It is not that I lack my family’s surprisingly marketable sense of morality, but I – perhaps owing to my understanding of mathematics, perhaps to my early childhood isolation - I have not always acted on these instincts. Not in a way that has earned me any great sense of endearment.”

It was simply the way markets worked. In order for someone to win, someone had to lose, and countless bankers and businessmen who had correctly assessed the state of the Hewlett’s holdings had shorted one of their corporations before Edmund’s eye for numbers had forced a turnaround. When the next quarterly report was released, fortunes were lost on what was assumed to have been a safe bet. As a result, there were those who wished to see his father, Lord Edmund, ruined, including a number of banking institutions who held his debt. Were it ever to come out how close he had actually been to collapse, were it ever to be made public that a mere child had been forced to save him from his fall, Edmund’s father and the companies he championed would lose consumer confidence. How much their businesses would suffer depended on a number of factors over which there was no way to execute control, but all estimates were certain that it would include layoffs damning to the local economy. Edmund figured this was likely why the whole of the matter had never properly been investigated at the time despite the loud cries from London.

No one in the family knew of young Edmund’s involvement. His siblings assumed that after father saw what a coddled brat he had grown into during the time they had spent together in the city, Edmund had been sent to military boarding school which did little to straighten him out in the two years he attended. He did nothing to protest. What would come from it besides causing the people he loved to become embarrassed of themselves and of each other? Besides, he enjoyed school. He had developed a taste for authority in the offices of Edenborough, and another closed society allowed him to easily and fully indulge his addiction. This behaviour continued as an undergraduate, though largely because at that point Edmund had been under the assumption that adding further credence to his siblings’ jealous claims served some greater good. The largely empty rumours surrounding him protected his father’s image (which had always been his goal) and allowed him to ignore how lonely his existence was.

He explained to Ms. Smith that while it was true that he often featured in the type of newspapers he still assumed were chiefly consumed by world leaders who did not know about the AIDS epidemic back in the eighties and nineties; he spent most of his nights alone in his college dorm. He had a lot of acquaintances but few friends, and even his professors – two of whom had once been his private tutors - seemed a little intimidated by him.

“Admittedly, these problems still persist. Even here. I have always found it rather strange. I – I don’t blame it on my upbringing, I know the fault lies in me, but I fear as though I was never properly socialized in my youth and never properly learned how it is that one is to behave around others. Just this very afternoon one of my closest friends insinuated that I was a narcissist and shortly before coming, one of my housemates told me that she thinks I treat people poorly unless I want something from them. I barely knew how to respond to either change. In truth I, well I live in constant terror of anyone knowing just how scared I am and I fear that to this day I may over compensate. Forgive me, Madame, I digress. To return to our story, when I was in my third year I had a massive stroke due to of a genetic condition, which Anna may have already mentioned to you. I spent the next two years at home without receiving a single visitor, mostly wishing that I were anyone other than Edmund Hewlett. I suppose by then it was too late to be anyone else.”

Physical therapy had been long and terribly expensive. Upon reaching the age of twenty-five and gaining access to her trust fund, his older sister assumed that the amount their parents had set aside for her owed itself to Edmund’s illness and supposed spending habits rather than to his intervention in making sure there was something left for her and the others to inherit. Edna wasted no time complaining that he would be the ruin of their house. Edmund continued to maintain that it would have done nothing to correct her assumptions beyond jeopardize everything else he had worked to preserve. He knew how things looked to his siblings from a distance. He could not resent them, it was either not in his character or he recognized that he too would have made the same sort of presumption had he not more information then he entitled them to.

Time passed, but Edmund’s overall relationship with his family did not improve with their fortunes. When he regained his strength, he returned to school and as much of life as he could reasonably manage. He had long ceased speaking with his father after getting into a fight about how secret their dealings ought to remain. His father had grown weary of his children’s endless squabbling, which seemed to worsen with each new sunrise. Upon hearing this, Edmund left the estate without much word.

Sometimes years passed without seeing any of his relatives with the exception of photo and press junctions. _Ah!_ Edmund would think two months later, alone in a research centre with a microwave dinner and a birthday card signed by a few of his colleagues, _so this is Christmas._

Occasionally he needed to borrow money. As it turned out, there was not a lot to be made with a double master’s in astronomy and astrophysics. He could - of course - have lived in squalor then as he did now, but to that time, he was still the heir apparent to his uncle’s dukedom and his father’s fortune, and appearances had to be maintained. Half of the family’s public image was generosity; the other half was the obscene wealth that allowed it. Edmund was comparatively broke much of the time.

The October (otherwise known as December) before he left the British Isles for those of New York, his siblings confronted him, stating that he was unfit to become the family’s representative. Above his parents protests he capitulated, begging his sisters and brother not to publically press the matter. It would be sorted quietly. They, all of them, had to present a united front. Edna tried to explain as kindly as possible all of the reasons why it made no sense for Edmund to remain, essentially, why he was an embarrassment. _If my continued presence in these halls causes such discord,_ he replied sadly, _I am prepared to leave them behind._ He admitted she was right on all counts; they had workers, tenants, business and charity objectives to consider. _I am happier at school anyway,_ he stated. It was neither a lie nor a misrepresentation of the truth.

And so, having fifteen years before burned through his trust fund on an investment in the future of a family he had since been forced to abandon all stakes in, he wished his lady sister luck with her new status, knowing that she truly did believe she was doing the right thing. And maybe she was. Edmund was proud but paranoid, criticism stuck to him and his mistakes were often magnified under the scrutiny of his own self-doubt. He was not a leader. He enrolled in graduate school on the other side of the world and left with the £90,000 he had in his own savings, hoping that by the time he returned with the only title he could now hope for, the animosity the world bore him would have diminished.

“ _Facilis descensus Averno_ , as they say.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m pretty sure no one says that,” Russo scoffed. After pacing under a street lamp outside of the District Attorney’s home, he had felt particularly charitable and gone to the 7/11 two blocks away on a quick coffee run. His colleagues were not half as appreciative of the gesture as he himself would have been. They spent the better part of an hour sitting together in silence. Yilmaz listening in on Anna Strong’s telephone conversation taking notes lackadaisically, Sackett contributing nothing at present to the investigation as all of the mechanics and recording equipment on which they were reliant, and he responsible, seemed to be in working order.

“I knew you weren’t really Italian,” his partner snapped, pulling one of her headphone off her ear. “Talking about my cousin’s pizzeria like -”

“It’s Latin, Yilmaz,” Sackett interjected. “Honestly, had neither of you an education in classical language?”

“I took two years of Spanish,” Russo offered, swirling the remnants of his now cold coffee in the Styrofoam cup he still held.

“ESL counted as a foreign language credit when I was in high school.”

“It is from Virgil’s Aeneid,” Sackett continued, “ _the decent to hell is easy -_ an early form of the proverb _the road to hell is paved with good intentions_.”

Russo rolled the eyes he could barely keep open. “I just want to throw it out there; this is why no one likes Hewlett. No one talks like that. Not even you when you’ve had enough sleep. This is so fucking boring,” he complained as he removed off his headset. “I’m just waiting for Ira Glass to interrupt all nasally like _Up Next: Act Two – Venti, Vidi, Nothing in Your Jurisdiction_. _Stay. Tuned.”_

“There is no statute on corruption charges and he did admit to using charitable funds to underwrite a failing corporate venture,” Yilmaz offered. “We could give that to Hamilton to use as leverage in his dealings with the SIS.”

“Still not our jurisdiction.”

Sackett put the audio on surround sound and as Edmund Hewlett went off on a tangent about the classics, the sergeants complained that the worst of it was that they would be subject to hearing this again in the morning once Backer and Braxton had had a listen.

“Yilmaz, did we learn anything useful about Mr. Simcoe?” Sackett asked when it seemed that Hewlett would be speaking at some length on a topic of little interest to the police force. She sat up straight with a small shimmy as if she had been waiting the whole night for him to ask.

“Okay, so Tallmadge and Sanchez were off in their predictions. Simcoe was not remotely interested in Strong’s very forward advances.”

“How forward?” Sackett asked.

“Nudes,” Yilmaz winked.

“I mean, that is clearly evidence we all need to look at,” Russo joked.

“Clearly, but later. I’m not done. Get this, Mary Woodhull –as in, the daughter-in-law of the esteemed Judge Richard -was with our hapless victim – slash – character witness and told Strong not to think herself entitled to every man she looks at. So then Strong was like _whoa, hold up. What?_ Woodhull then told her, _stay out of my marriage and my liaison_ ; and Strong responded that she had no idea about Mary and Abe back when they had been roommates and then proceeded to judge her about Simcoe. She stressed his name as if she meant to be saying “ _eww gross_.” So Woodhull responded that Strong was, wait – I wrote this one down.” She smiled and reached for her yellow block. _“Such a self-centric little whore. Seeing as you clearly do not care for or about John at all, you should just buy yourself a vibrator and go back to pretending to give a fuck about constellations with your pallid virgin and leave the real men to me_. Then Woodhull hung up.”

“Any of that there paraphrased?” Russo asked.

“Nope. Nice isn’t it? I almost want Müge or Narin to give me an excuse to slut-shame them like that now."

“You’re a terrible friend.”

“You’re jealous that I have more fun both on and off the job,” she responded before sticking out her tongue.

“Yilmaz,” Sacket cautioned.

“You’re both jealous. Okay, but that was pretty much it. Strong tried to seduce Simcoe; Woodhull intervened, proving that the alibi he provided Officer Bradford was valid.”

“What alibi?”

“Simcoe was driving around Setauket early this morning. He was pulled over and said that he had just been in a motel with Mary Woodhull. The way she spoke to Anna Strong it seems legit.”

“Simcoe was in Setauket –and Connecticut -early this morning according to his own account?” Sackett clarified again.

“I put that into the report, Sir,” Yilmaz affirmed.

That altered matters.

“Let me call your boss and make sure he is aware of it.”

 

* * *

 

“What I really don’t understand, Mr. Hewlett, is how you can possibly take offence to Jordan’s assertion that you were raised in a bubble.”

“I well … I knew what was going on in the wider world - for the most part - without, that is, actually having taken an active part. Until I did. Ah, it was such a messy business. I daresay I am rather glad to have that all behind me.” He realised as he spoke that this was his truth. He was happier in misery with Anna then he ever imagined being at the head of an estate. Things had worked out. He would work things out. He would find his way back to her, of this he was certain.

“How much of this does Anna know?”

“Very little –at least from me. I told her about my medical condition, which unfortunately, is bound to have some effect on our lives together. As I’ve said, the whole business of inheritance no longer concerns me. As such, it has never come up in any significant detail. I don’t believe she knows I am -or rather was I suppose - highborn. In truth, I suspect it would serve is something of a turnoff, so it might suit your interests to grant me the opportunity to tell her.”

“Adamant, aren’t you?” Ms. Smith smiled. Somehow, be it through chocolate or honesty, Hewlett felt as if he was winning her over to his cause.

“On that point you may have me.”

“And your family? What will they say of your wish to marry an American?”

“I’ve yet to hear from my parents. They would love her instantly, of that I can assure you. My brother congratulated me on the match and I have no reason to believe that my sisters wish me any ill will. Ah - from a political standpoint a marriage to an American seems like a good excuse to announce the official abdication of my claim without causing too much lasting scandal or embarrassment.”

“You seem to have calculated all of this.”

“I fear that may be my predisposition,” he acknowledged.

“I’ll return your honesty with my own, Mr. Hewlett. I am not quite certain what to make of you, I don’t know if you’re suitable for my daughter, though not for the reasons I initially gave my objections.”

“Enlighten me then.”

“I don’t, for one, personally believe you are involved in Senator Arnold’s disappearance as I once did. However, I worry that your idea of love requires a certain relentlessness; you may yet prove yourself a dangerous man.”

“Dangerous? Madame, think not that I am without regret.” _Determined_ he could accept; _dangerous_ however was simply preposterous. He questioned what other stories she hoped to hear – what else, specifically – Simcoe might have confessed his knowledge of or alluded to.

“Brave words, Mr. Hewlett.”

“Brave or not you asked for an honest account of my crimes and I’ve provided you one that I hope meets your satisfaction. Now, please Madame, will you call for your daughter? I fear we have much to discuss.”

Anna’s mother nodded. She placed her finger over her lips and motioned for Hewlett to follow her. Instead of leading him to Anna, she brought him to a large kitchen in the rear of the house that looked as if it had never been used and turned on the faucet.

“I have to make more coffee. Ours was growing cold.”

Hewlett did not respond. Ms. Smith made no more gestures that might suggest she had any intention of using the water for a purpose beyond drowning her words.

“I lied,” she said. “There is no paper trail, Edmund. Not at least one that the NYPD has been given access to. You poor dear, you are – or were - better at all of this than you allow yourself to think.”

Though he heard what she said, only one word registered. “Edmund,” he repeated, trying not to smile like a fool.

“Nancy,” she said, gesturing to herself and then offering her hand to him. He took it, noting how firm her handshake was – a symptom of the profession, he expected. Richard Woodhull’s friendly grip carried the same force.

“I believe you, when you say that you love my daughter, Edmund. That, however, is not something that is really left for me to decide.”

“Your right,” he agreed.

“You are not right for her, you must know that.” She caressed the hand she still held as if to express pity, sympathy, or sorrow. Edmund pulled back before he could make an adequate assessment.

“With respect, that is not for you to decide either.”

“You’ll only hurt her.”

“She will want for nothing so long as I breathe.”

“Whatever else you may well be, Edmund Hewlett, you are the chief suspect in a high profile investigation-”

“Law. Order. Authority,” Hewlett interrupted, translating the words on his family’s crest into English. “Ma’am, I believe that your judicial system is competent enough to serve its basic function. I had nothing to do with Senator Arnold’s disappearance. The investigation will prove that if it has not already.”

“Oh you poor boy. You have no idea how any of this of this works in the real world, do you?”

“You mean in America? No. But after two years of being told that I am in the greatest country on earth by everyone I’ve encountered, forgive me, but I expect a bit more of your laws and law enforcement than conspiracies of convenience.”

 

* * *

 

Constable Sanchez -alias Josephine the maid - snatched the earbud Anna was listening in on her mother’s conversation on after less than thirty seconds of complete silence. She switched the device she held to its communicative feature and asked, “Mr. Sackett, I can’t hear anything anymore, can you?”

Anna could not hear the response but she rose instantly when she saw the constable pull her service weapon out from under her skirt and take the safety off.

“Please stay here, Ms. Strong,” Sanchez said.

Anna called her actions into question. A minute before, Sanchez had had an arm wrapped around her, seeming to share in the sorrow and sympathy she bore towards her fiancé.

“What the fuck?” Anna exclaimed, “When exactly did _your_ earpiece go out? He is a good man, the only crime he ever thought to commit was to marry me – the love of his life – and because he stands to get a visa out of it you plan to shoot him? You heard him, if I were to break this off -”

“Please stay upstairs, Ms. Strong. I have to check on your mother. If I don’t, Russo or Yilmaz will. They have both been working for twenty hours straight and proficient as they both are with firearms and hostage situations, mistakes get made.”

“Who is being held hostage here?” Anna demanded as she shoved past the armed officer.

She flew down the winding stairwell, down the long hallway and through the double doors that lead to the largely unused kitchen as fast as her feet could carry her, only half aware that she had just assaulted the cop who was trailing her.

Her entrance ended a conversation midsentence. Edmund embraced her, apologizing profusely for not being able to get in touch after his release. Anna began to weep from relief.

“Now, now,” he whispered.

“Ma’am, is everything alright?” she heard Sanchez ask.

“It is fine Josephine. Mr. Hewlett and I just wanted to make another pot of coffee.”

Sanchez nodded. From her peripheral vision, Anna saw her make hand gestures from the window above the double sink. She wondered how close she had come to losing him. Suddenly she felt her mother’s hand on her back. “Sweetheart, why don’t the two of you go upstairs? I’m certain you’ll have a lot to talk about. I managed to have the bugs restricted to the common rooms.”

 

* * *

 

The warmth of his skin made her feel colder as she connected the tiny dots inked into his pale, smooth chest, tracing shapes with her finger tips, imaging that she was instead combing them through a thick redwood forest – still breathless, still able to feel John inside of her. Anna closed her eyes to return to the sins she would never enact. Edmund seemed unaware. He barely seemed present. Anna wondered where his fantasies lead him when he held her. Perhaps to Mary Grant – now Mary Woodhull – if her history with men were employed as an informer. Then again, perhaps Edmund has no clandestine desires of which to speak. Perhaps that was why she was left to content herself with the dark imaginings of her rebellious subconscious.

“I thought they were freckles at first,” she smiled when she felt his hand graze hers, realizing she had been tracing the same picture for quite some time.

“Ah,” he replied. It was uncommitted. It was how they started. He was adrift; she was nowhere she wished to be. He apologised again.

Edmund had been hard when she had brought him upstairs, away from the world that would hang him for his affiliations to one all of her own; to her twin bed in a room filled with artefacts of the girl she had been and broken dreams of the women she had then hoped to become. His dark eyes sparkled as she fought with the nightshirt her mother had lent her, pulling it over her head, pressing her large, bare breasts against his trembling body the moment she emancipated them. The way he ginned as he held her –as he beheld her for the first time without the stain of shy reluctance - made Anna question if she had ever truly managed to seduce a man before. His breaths had been short and shallow as she unzipped his trousers. He looked down with caution and up with surprise. It had been the first time he had himself ever witnessed his canon mounted and in position.

Anna giggled at his phrasing, pulling him to her bedside. Edmund stumbled over the pant legs still around his ankles but managed not to fall. “This is happening,” he whispered, delighted, elated and every bit as nervous as she suddenly felt. Anna slid off her Sophie’s and her knickers whist Edmund climbed on top of her.

For a ten-minute eternity, they fought a losing battel. She grew sore spreading her legs as he fumbled against her, trying to force his way in. Anna whispered encouragements as she tried to keep herself moist with her fingertips. Edmund squished and squeezed his ever-softer member until his short-lived confidence gave way to self-condemnation. She sat up and kissed him deeply to temporally halt his tongue’s treacherous speech. When she was certain she had silenced his doubts, she started unbuttoning his vest and shirt, leaving a trail of light kisses as she worked her was down his surprisingly hard body until she reached his – disappointing - soft cock. It did not help matters when she attempted to take it in her mouth. He was completely limp and it seemed no amount of caressing could change that. Anna’s face must have betrayed her disgust; Edmund instantaneously became apologetic which did nothing to help the matter.

“It never lasts,” he lamented.

“It is alright,” she whispered. “Hush. Lie with me. Da mi basia mille, deinde centum. ”

Rather than covering her in kisses as Catullus originally requested, he lightly grazed her lip before citing something Anna knew to be from the same text about the brevity of light. How often, she wondered, did he spin desire into spurn? Could love truly blossom from an attraction she feared was –and was fated to remain – purely intellectual? He spoke to a side of her rarely recognized in the company they kept. Perhaps, Anna thought, her life was better so. She was happy pouring beer, happy –if not satisfied - with her base fantasies of the flesh.

Fantasy seemed to be all Edmund envisioned himself sharing in.

He did not cry openly, which she respected. He seemed to further resign himself to his fate, which she did not. He began to relay a story from mythology, or the ancient world that he deemed relevant to his plight. Anna was not certain. She was barely attentive, her unspoken fears about the sustainability of their affair screaming in her soul. At some point, he realized this and became silent. Anna escaped to her thoughts of past lovers, of good sex that had been too short and bad sex that had at least achieved penetration. She thought about John, about how dismissive he had been of her advances. She thought about him fucking her college roommate whilst he had left her to lie wondering how much of her fiancé’s impotence was pathological as compared to how much of it was simply a manifestation of his general repugnance towards that which love ought to normalize.

She wondered if part of John still wanted her. She wondered if there was a part of her not born from disappointment that had ever otherwise wanted John.

Edmund released her hand.

“I’m sorry, I can only imagine how hard this must be-” she stopped, regretting her wording.

“You needn’t apologise, love. You are a passionate woman and I … I can only hope to make myself worthy of your affections.”

Edmund’s _passionate woman_ remark stung every bit as much as Mary’s _self-entitled little whore_. Perhaps they both had the same root meaning – Anna longed, as she always had, for that which was right out of reach. Her fiancé knew this without knowing it, or he was actively aware and simply chose to feign innocence.

“I’ll have insurance next month,” he continued, “and should my medication run out beforehand – which I daresay, I half expected it would have by this point – well, we’ll give it another go. I’d ought to simply, that is …” he trailed off. She followed his thoughts where they lead. Edmund all but claimed he would risk death if she were to suggest it might serve her fancy. Perhaps he truly believed in his unspoken sentiment. Anna believed just below his pale façade he still wanted to die.

Yet he lived.

For her.

“You don’t need to give me the world,” she said gazing up up to meet his eyes. “Edmund, you’ve given me galaxies.”

“Darling,” he seemed to plead. He smiled weakly. There was something tragic in his expression, as if he could see all of her crimes against him. As though he forgave her – for her admission, for working with the police, for the daydreams she felt powerless against, for the resentment she bore him for a condition over which he had no control. It made everything worse. She thought about all the sum of that which he had confessed to her mother. Lying naked beside her after being humiliated by her lust was likely one of the bravest, most intimate actions he had ever taken. With her admiration, so grew her guilt.

“Where are we?” she whispered.

“I - forgive me, love. I don’t follow.”

“In your universe,” she whispered as she stoked his hard, hairless chest. His skin was still slightly damp from the excursion of his short-lived attempt to consummate their relationship. Anna’s fingers followed a line of stars unlike the others up his left bicep. She pulled her hand back in a jolt when she realized they covered a scar. He apologised. Again. Anna wondered how many times he had attempted to excuse himself in the past hour. “Please, Edmund. Stop.”

He blinked and gave a slight nod.

“Here,” he answered, touching her face lightly. “You’re the earth, Anna. You are the world. And we - we are here. Ah - more specifically, if you will,” he struggled free himself from her embrace. Leaning forward, he pointed to his left shoulder with the opposite hand. “The entire piece is a star map. If you were to look outside right now, were the city lights not interfering with our view, this is what you would be able to see. Vela,” he smiled weakly. “And here – Carnia.” Moving he hand back to his scar, he continued, “Pyxis. It is comprised of mostly faint stars; you likely wouldn’t see it with the naked eye … even out in Oyster Bay.”

Before she could stop herself, she asked, “Are we speaking metaphorically?”

“Are we?” Edmund echoed, continuing dismissively, “Come, I will show you. Not Pyxis, but I believe that even with New York’s light pollution we could make out-”

“Stay in bed,” she moaned. He declined. The blankets were cold without him.

“I – ah, as it were, darling, I’d really ought to be preparing for my departure anyway. Should I show you the stars before I do?”

My, she noted. First person singular. Her doubts, albeit unspoken, drove him away.

“Don’t leave, and don’t – don’t let me break your heart, Edmund. I love you. I’m sorry I just -”

“Darling, what is this talk? I’ll hear no more of it. You’ve had an impossible day by any standards and I know I’ve done little to make it lighter. I’m not leaving because of you – well – ah, not directly. I’ve a meeting before dawn I fear I can’t escape.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“I promise I’m … in control of the situation I am about to walk into. I’ll be back in the morning. Get some rest my love.”

“I am all but certain Tallmadge still has a surveillance van parked outside.”

“And?”

“Where are you going?”

“Why to exhume the senator and move his corpse to a safer hiding spot, now that I know a surveillance van in play,” he said dryly.

“You shouldn’t joke like that!” she scolded.

“You shouldn’t laugh.”

Anna had not been, but suddenly she could not seem to stop herself.

“Ah, it is all a bit ridiculous, is it not? Anna, I believe in the rule of law and the flaws of man. Which isn’t even to mention how easy it is to get lost in the Woods of Setauket while drunken in the dead of night. This is rendition; I am not entirely convinced that it has nothing to do with who my parents are. But now they know my sins and unless Cameron honestly plans to go forth with this silly referendum he’s proposed it is not as if your government can, or will do anything with the information I provided. Europe is too important as a trade partner and the Hewletts are too important to Europe. They are not going to risk their hand in these relations before TTIP is finalized.”

“You’ve sacrificed so much Edmund – and for what? To be labelled a murder on the other side of the world. It is unjust. And I’ve -”

“Can anything be said to be a sacrifice when it is done in the name of love?”

“Edmund, must you go?”

“I must.”

“Where?”

Edmund started dressing as he asked her forgiveness. He was bound by his word not to say, and he wished not to lie.

“Is there truly a difference between secrets and lies?” Anna retorted.

“I assumed you knew about my heritage, from Google if nothing else. I had no designs on misleading you. In truth, my dear, regardless of the expectations of my birth, I’m simply not heir to anything, and as such I felt no pressing need to mention it.” He paused, adding with a snort of comic irony, “Your living the highlights though, believe me. Small flat in a historic home, most of which we can’t enter; staging photographs to convince a disconnected audience of our stated relationship. When I stop to think on it, it seems I was born and raised to be an illegal immigrant.”

She smiled despite her best efforts not to.

“It won’t be this way forever, love. I’m going to … let’s just say that by pure happenstance I came upon a means of transforming your dreams of owning the tavern a reality and I’d be fool not to at the very least attempt to exploit it.”

Anna’s heart stopped. She would have preferred if he had just as dismissively confessed that he had a somehow found himself a mistress to disappoint. No. Edmund Hewlett was shy, kind, decent and humane. He was however as the whole of his confessed history had proven, ruthless and hubristic when it came to business, or, as he put it, _love_.

She thought of Tallmadge, Hamilton, and the French spy she had only met briefly before he had been called away on more important business – perhaps something owing to Edmund’s idea of rendition. She thought of Constable Sanchez, about the implications she had made regarding Russo, Yilmaz and their service weapons. She thought of how cavalier Edmund was when he dismissed the threat the collectively bore him. She watched him as he button his shirt, lamenting that it had become wrinkled and brushing out imagined creases.

In that moment, Anna was afraid both for and of him. She feared the again amplified attraction she felt – and what that might imply about her character. More than anything, however, she feared his answer to the question she dared only to whisper.

“Please tell me this has nothing to do with the missing senator.”

He stopped abruptly and turned to meet her stare.

“It has nothing – well, you see, funny as it is, I, ah. Perhaps I should clarify.”

“Edmund!”

“Shh.”

“Clarify you should.”

“I overheard a conversation the Frenchman was having over the phone, that is - while you were being interrogated back at Whitehall. Given Setauket’s famously poor mobile reception, he spoke loudly and kept having to repeat himself and …well, I happened upon some information that may, at some point in the near future, be beneficial in helping to obtain -” he stopped abruptly and taking her into his arms, continued on another thought. “Anna, I have nothing to do with Senator Arnold. I’d no idea who he even was until he went missing, but there are people, people in positions of power who mean to benefit from the effects his absence from the American political stage will have on international trade and trade policy. Why should we not be among them?”

“Because you are a good and decent man.”

“Who otherwise has no hope of providing for you. Of … of making you happy. Don’t worry, love. It is not as if this whole terrible business is not something of a routine.”

It was exactly as she had dreaded.

“You have no idea what you are up against. Edmund, please, come back to bed. You yourself are enough, don’t you understand? Even … even with sex, we’ll get there and even if we don’t - did you not hear me when I told you that I would still wish to marry had you nothing more to offer than the man I’ve known you to be? I don’t understand, and perhaps I never shall, how given your past your idea of love is so wrapped up in finance.”

“So is yours,” he started laughing. Paraphrasing from one of their first conversations, Edmund choked, “Um, hi. I realize we are not all that well acquainted as it were, but I believe it might be to our mutual benefit if, it we were to – Anna, Miss Strong, I have a flat here in Setauket and I’d be willing to pay you a sum of $10,000 to consent to being my wife for a year or so. Well, that is, I mean, in a purely legal, platonic sense.”

“Fuck you.”

“That is the other half of the problem isn’t it?”

“Edmund!”

“Shh. Now, now.”

“You shh. When I told you I love you, I meant it. And haven’t I – don’t I put up with enough of your bullshit to prove it? You are so secretive, so-”

“What is there to say? I hardly knew myself after my dissertation. You are a beacon, Anna. You are the only one I …” he trailed off. He often did.

“Why do you find it so easy to say to the authorities but so fucking difficult to say to me?”

“Because I am broke, Anna. Because I broke everything.”

“Edmund. Look at me. I love you but I refuse to be the sword you fall on. Please, tell me what is going on. Tell me how I can help.”

He sat down. Cradling his forehead in both hands as he leaned forward, his elbows digging into his kneecaps, he spoke. “When I went to the ATM my transaction was declined. I have nothing, Anna, and I honestly might have done better to anticipate as much. I gambled what is or rather was left of my savings on a high-risk investment, and for the first time since, well in quite a while I can’t get in touch with my banker. Maybe he has my end game figured out -that in essence I’ve already beaten him, regardless of what happens to my personal finances. Then again, perhaps he is simply hesitant to speak of our joint entanglement over the phone. I suppose that is every bit as logical. Darling, it is not for you to concern yourself with any of this. Just please know that you are universally adored, and I consider it a blessing that I can count myself among those willing to fall at your feet.”

“How dare you, Sir!”

“Pardon?”

“What the fuck is going on? We’re engaged Edmund, you surrendered your right to sullen, vague musings the moment you asked me to share in your life.”

“You’re right,” he consented, and so he explained. He told her that since his attempted suicide – language, she noted, which he had scoffed at the night before – their mutual friend John Graves Simcoe had been unhinged. “More so,” he clarified, “than usual.”

“Simcoe has been obsessed with a dark idea he has of me since first we met. I’ve spent decades both heartbroken over him and half in love because –though it shames me to admit it - I’m just vain enough to accept his canon. He wants to be the man he sees –or, as it seems I managed to shatter our delicate equilibrium with half a bottle of Xanax - long saw me as, and damn it all! I can no other options and I mean to let him. Be me. The me he knew back when I fancied that I knew myself. How ignorant and arrogant we were in our shared youth.”

“I … I don’t understand. I thought you met in New York.”

“I thought we were content to pretend we had. It is unimportant. I have Simcoe back where I can control him. I took a bet, and he took the bait. A lack of self-control, rather than outright greed makes him as successful as he is,” he mused.

“Is Mary Woodhull involved?” Anna asked when she had grown certain that Edmund was unwilling to volunteer any else concerning his pre-dawn duel. Maybe whatever crime the two idiot Brits had conspired to commit while under heavy surveillance had more to do with John’s rejection than she herself. Or Mary. Or Edmund.

He blinked.

“Mary ... no. No. Why would she be? Ah – it is not really my business, but –she and Simcoe, they are, ah, I’m not really sure how to put this. I fear I lack the suitable vocabulary.”

“Fucking?”

“Not exactly. Ah, it isn’t mine to tell but, as I’ve stated, Simcoe has been spiralling for quite some time – something that in itself I mean to put an end to but no matter – he’s, well you see. It seems Mary Woodhull is unhappy in her marriage to Abraham Woodhull; a man Simcoe had despised for reasons I do not fully pretend to understand for some time now. He is pretending to have an affair with her, and it seems they are both pretending that whatever it is they do in each other’s presence has not led to at least some attraction. It is a rather messy business. But no. This is strictly between Simcoe and myself.”

The word, Anna decided, was not in fact _fucking_. It was _fucked up_.

Edmund rose, kissing her forehead, and promising to return as soon as the fates allowed.

“Don’t go,” Anna begged. “I don’t you realize that you are the only suspect in a high profile murder investigation. You are under surveillance. Forget Tallmadge. The FBI satellite in Manhattan specializes in financial crimes. Alexander Hamilton has a background in economics – you and John are going to get caught. Unless...”

“Unless?”

She hesitated. She tried not to think of the photographs she had sent or the work she had put into taking them. She tried not to think of Edmund’s sorted history, of his illness or of the heart medication that rendered him important. She tried not to think of how she had all but forced him to test his limits, or her disappointment, of the fantasies that ensued. She thought only of the moment they were in when she pulled him into a kiss she feared might be the last they would ever share. Finding no other immediate option, she spoke.

“The task force is operating under the assumption that John has … romantic feelings for me.”

“He does. If you think I suffered no shame in -”

“Hush. Listen. You are going to have a fight. With me. Over me - with Simcoe. Make that seem like what you are leaving tonight to do and it will throw them off enough until we can work out a more sustainable solution, or until you are eliminated as a suspect.” Anna took a deep breath, “Forgive me, my love. There is something I fear I must confess.”

 

* * *

 

“Did you ever love me?” he repeated again when they had reached the doorway. “I would have given everything for you. Answer my question, Ms. Strong; I deserve at least that much.” Speaking slowly, hoarsely with tears in his eyes, he asked once more, stressing the adverb.

“Did you ever love me?”

Once more Anna failed to answer.

“Then it is perhaps for the best if we quit each other my dear. I would suggest, for your sake, that you might endeavour to quit that devil Simcoe as well.”

With that, he left - slamming the door behind him. He heard Anna collapse in the tears she was forcing and the creak of the floorboards as her mother rushed to her side. An engine started, as Anna expected it would, but no headlights went on and the van he knew to be in the shadows remained cloaked in darkness. Hewlett turned his back on the Smith household, pulled out his phone and typed.

_< <Anna just told me about your little conversation. _

_I’m coming over. We have to talk. This has to end. >>_

_< <Did she mention the picture she sent? >>_

Simcoe wrote back almost instantly, sending an attachment. He opened a photograph that caused him to blush and wonder how much of this was all play-acting. Anna was misusing a showerhead with a caption that she was thinking of him. Of Simcoe. Hewlett was too disgusted to respond.

_< <Surprised this is coming from you. >>_

_< < Bring coffee. >>_

_< <And cream if you need it. >>_

_< <Oyster, still there? Bros before hoes, right? >>_

_< <I won’t tolerate this. She is to be my wife. >>_

Hewlett put the mobile into his pocket. It buzzed again with what he hoped for the sake of their sorted friendship was a heartfelt apology. He read.

_< <Hew … wait. I wasn’t kidding _

_about the coffee. I have nothing_

_at home and we’ve a lot got finish up. >>_

_< <Fine. Unfreeze my account. >>_

_< < It is after midnight your good. _

_Get the stuff from 7/11. They are open. I think. >>_

Hewlett responded by turning off his phone. For a moment he closed his eyes, leaned forward and rested his head on the steering wheel, wondering how his life could have become so completely altered in the span of a day. He tried to calculate what time last night Anna had opened up to him about her dreams, how much time elapsed between him promising to make the a reality and her telling him that she would prefer to spend the rest of her natural life working behind a bar. He wondered if Senator Arnold had been killed by then, if he was dead at all, and if this was the same representative of the people whose penis he had seen on John Andre’s phone a few months ago. He wondered if that was what had finally forced Andre into at least making overtures of reforming his ways. He wondered if there was a Senator Arnold at all, or if this was all an elaborate ruse to trick him into admitting everything he had to Nancy Smith. He had not heard from his family in a while, and it might be in his best interest to ring his mum or one of the aides who helped his uncle and sister manage the estate to see if anything was amiss. He wondering if his paranoia was warranted; or if what he ought to concern himself with was the question of if he was on the correct anti-anxiety medication at all. His tension loosened and his head hit the steering wheel, causing the horn to go off. Hewlett sat up, rubbed his eyes, and decided that drinking coffee with a man his fiancée thought of during sex and evidently sent nudes to might just be his best option right now. He turned on the automobile with the push of a button and asked his navigation system where the nearest 7/11 was before realizing that he was parked not two blocks away.

Hewlett could see the glow of the neon sign from where he sat; bleaching out the light of all the stars whose glow had travelled millions of lightyears, only to disappear in the artificial luminescence of a city that never slept.

He understood their plight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we just like appreciate for a moment how hoarse poor Edmund must be at this point? 
> 
> I only have one note for you this go around, the poem referenced here is _Catullus 5_ , which you can find over Google, but I recommend investing the Peter Green translation if you happen to read poetry for enjoyment.
> 
> Comments and Kudos are always appreciated, as is your readership. Thank you so much for your patience with my sporadic updates. Come visit me on Tumblr any time, I’d love to hear from each and every one of you about anything you fancy talking about.
> 
> Till next time, XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up Next: _Simcoes Before Hoes_


	17. The Press

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simcoe receives a dispatch from the Homefront, a set of compromising selfies, an answer to all of his various legal kerfuffles and … a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said on Tumblr that I was going to leave this update until my birthday at the end of the month, and in essence, I have. This chapter is divided into uneven halves, the longer of which you will get when I get my cake. What can I say, it has already been nearly a month, and if Anna and Edmund get their own chapter, so too should Mary and Simcoe (and their missing corpse.)
> 
> Warnings: minor reference to the US 2016 election results, more financial intrigue than you ever asked for, extramarital affections.
> 
> Enjoy!

He did not adjust his bid. By the time the newsstands opened in the morning, he would have no reason to.

Applebee’s had already withdrawn their interest, as had five of his other competitors. As it stood, Martin DeJong would be forced to sell his tavern to either Hewlett and himself or the sole other bidder for a fifth of his original asking price. There was no need to outbid. His esteemed colleague, it seemed, had already sorted the matter through family connections. Once the affiliation the property had with the missing senator was made public, Simcoe’s faceless rival would doubtlessly be forced into concession. The bar itself was all but worthless prior to the mess he and Mary Woodhull had entangled themselves in last night; by morning it would not merit the hundred thousand he had put forward to announce his interest.

It was reason for concern.

There was always the change that the police might chose to question his recent transactions. He could not tell them that Hewlett had tipped him off to the sale without drawing the authorities’ attention to their more nefarious combined venture, or worse - to his own lighting (and losing) of the fuse that caused the market chaos that allowed it. He had no other explanation for why he made an offer when he did. It would have been one thing if he were to attempt to sweep up land in Setauket _after_ actual news of the investigation threatened to replace claims of ISIS sleeper cells, radicalized Bernie Sanders supporters, and any other elements the fundamentally confused American media could think of to baselessly accuse.

 _Now?_ Now he was damned. His bid would attract suspicion. FBI interrogators would cease asking him about association football, rivalries and bar fights of old and begin to dismantle the alibi he had had for last night that, admittedly, had been too hastily constructed. Where would that lead? He thought of Mary Woodhull pleading for her son. Furiously driven, dutiful Mary, whose voice cracked as she imagined the sort of man her little boy might grow into if left to the custody of his grandfather. He thought of the smiling child with the bouncing blonde curls, who – unprompted – had politely thanked both him and God for the juice box and egg salad sandwich that Simcoe had purchased at the same Starbucks that morning. His lip curled. Mary Woodhull would not go down in the fight he had started.

If the police, their federal counterparts and foreign allies asked about his sudden interest in the tavern he was all but certain witnesses testimony could place him in the night before, he would simply tell them he had long been sold on its manager; on Anna Strong, whose love would soon be his to claim.

Perhaps not, he thought, reading the text message that accompanied the cover story that had by now been sent to print.

>> _Isn’t that your girlfriend?_ <<

The photograph under the sensationalist headline showed Anna nervously accompanying DCI Tallmadge into a crime scene. With any great luck, he reasoned, the crime in question -which Edmund Hewlett had no hand in committing- would prove the stargazer’s ultimate fall. He would be sentenced to life in a high security prison whose walls would protect him from Simcoe’s wrath. Though unnamed, the article would serve to Anna’s humiliation. As seen from Simcoe’s bias, an assault on her honour was a far more grievous offence than any he himself had committed.

He thought to text her again, but she had yet to respond to his last attempt at reaching out and likely needed space to come to him on her own.

Then again, he thought bitterly, maybe he was giving her too much credit.

Maybe what he ought to do - or ought to have done months if not years ago - was ask her to marry him so that he might stay in this country that pretended to have been a colony but knew nothing of cricket. Maybe he ought then to wake her up in the middle of the night to look at some dots in the distant sky and make her do calculus and linear algebra whilst he muttered indiscernible phrases in dead languages. Maybe then – finally - she might fancy him.

The question that left him mute and stilled his ever-trembling fingers was valid. The answer, simply, was ‘ _no’_ , which only complicated matters further.

John Graves Simcoe had for quite some time the unfortunate bad habit of explaining that he had long been in a romantic relationship with Anna Strong to those who he imagined would never have reason to fact-check him. To his dental hygienist she was _“a woman unmatched”_ , he had once told his barber _“her beauty was equalled only by her passion”,_ and to his friends across the Atlantic he had claimed that he _“planned to propose at Christmas.”_ These were not lies in themselves, but the premise on which he based his assertions – namely, that he and the lovely Miss Strong had been dating since she left her now-former husband two years prior was a fiction at best.

He found himself caught in a lie.

Simcoe imagined Anna’s name having come up over the years at various parties he had missed back home, her merits debated by people whom by their nature would always find her wanting. He imagined Edmund giving word to mummy dearest that he planned to wed himself to the same American law student - cum - beer wrench. He imagined the acting duchess then dispensing this information to her board of tacticians (which doubtlessly included the rest of her considerable brood) and the lot of them scrambling to either supress or politicise the whole affair by one of their preferred means. Silence. When employed properly, it was a perfectly adequate response; one that the Hewletts seemed to adore. He wondered if it had been more difficult for the members of the northern élite to quietly dine with the knowledge of a dead horse in their stables or ignore the reality that their prodigal son was slowly proving himself to be as much of what they deemed a public disgrace in Setauket as he had back in Scotland.

No.

There was no need for question.

He was looking at his answer.

Edmund was clearly regarded as a liability and the family proper seemed to have cut their loss. Anna Strong, though unnamed, was shamefully on the cover of a tabloid published by the media mogul to whom his ex-fiancée was heir. Doubtlessly, Effie Gwillim had consulted her roommate Ellie Hewlett prior to approving the publication. She always did. Ellie had likely responded with an empty smile that meant nothing and was therefore open to interpretation. She always did. Thus, the members of society who were privy to the news before it was published were already asking questions.

Questions, he feared, which not only delegitimized his idea of effortlessly slipping into the place his rival occupied at Anna Strong’s side, but -when mishandled - would make the story of his affair with Mary Woodhull less plausible. He took a deep breath and typed back a series of words that made so little sense he was still unable to accept them as being truthful.

>> _I lost her to a Hewlett._ <<

>> _Pathetic._ <<

>> _Not half as much as fucking one._ <<

Half an hour on Reddit had yielded a photograph of the sadist he had roomed with at boarding school cozied up to a socialite at a refugee determent camp. Clearly, their presence there had not been part of humanitarian mission. There was nothing to make of it otherwise; the two had loathed each other since first they met decades prior. Still, Simcoe knew enough of what his former classmates had done post-graduation to know to seek leverage should he ever need it.

>> _Drugs or weapons?_ <<

He wrote back after waiting a minute for a response to the image he sent. He passed another five in silence staring mournfully at Anna’s puzzled expression while his man in London typed. The message, when he finally received it, simply read

>> _Property._ _:)_ <<

“Property,” Simcoe swallowed, suspicions confirmed. So the coppers already knew. So they knew.

It was worse than he feared.

Ultimately, there was nothing to be done about the press. Anna Strong would spend a week or two as a topic of discussion among those who read glossy-covered tabloids as well as those who made sure the world kept turning when politically significant bigots disappeared in dive bars. Edmund Hewlett’s coup would eventually be received as a love story should it get that far and Simcoe would see himself villainized briefly before again dropping out of public interest.

Disgusting though it was, he did not have time to dwell. DeJong’s Tavern and the bid he had made had already attracted the attention of international security. Perhaps that had been Hewlett’s plan all along. Martha Dandridge had perhaps been correct in her assessment. He took a sip of weak tea that had since grown cold.

Simcoe read the word again. _Property._ It was a bad investment but a decent excuse. He thought of sweet Mary Woodhull, ruthless as any of the badges within earshot of the investigation. Her diligence had been their shared salvation, something in her smile that morning had been his and his alone.

Mary Woodhull would not go down in a fight he had started, not whilst he had any fight in him.

Simcoe wondered if he would be thinking of her quite as fondly if his ear did not ache as badly as it did. He wondered if the human bite was indeed infectious; if it was an infection that made him threaten the M16 and make feasible bids on worthless land to hide that he had conspired towards corporate fraud with someone early experience had shown would leave him for dead. Someone who, consciously or not, had laughingly reminded him of that fact two hours prior.

 

* * *

 

He started reading Abigail’s work minutes after Hewlett had directed him to it. Having sorted Tarleton via text as much as any man might and afterwards making a pale effort to heed his subtle warning, Simcoe pulled up the app he had used to download the work unto his tablet. Noting that he still had half an hour before he was scheduled to meet his partner in crime, he ordered himself a second cuppa and returned to reading slander.

He had only told one man the story of which a fictional account was now posted on a surprisingly popular website. Initially, he was keen to give its author her due; the work was witty and well written. He recognized the characters as mostly being comic colonial renditions of people he knew from the pub. _The pub._ He heard his fingertips as they pattered against the backside of his device. The pub. Though renamed in the narrative, it was still every bit the place he had beaten a man to his death twenty hours ago.

Simcoe asked himself if he would have recognized himself in the violent, vengeful garrison captain had he never made the acquaintance of Benedict Arnold. He wondered if everyone he knew long held this perception of him, that he was horrid, cold and cruel; that he took pleasure in empty violence. Dandridge clearly thought so, as did Tallmadge, and perhaps half of the precinct. John Andre likely thought so as well, and likely thought himself a genius for having come to this conclusion. He’d likely told his administrator of all of Simcoe’s secret traumas and public tantrums as he  laughed and fucked her whist his wife waited up for him and her long-term boyfriend tried to give her as much space as she needed to come to him on her own terms.

That, or - perhaps even more morally abhorrent - Abigail had just gone through his medical files.

Hewlett’s as well.

The Hewlett she wrote reminded him more of the one he had known as a boy, before he had learned to hide his brutality behind his brilliance. Reading about the major who whipped his subordinates for the most minor offences; who forced the townsfolk to unearth gravestones to build a barricade that he might torture and traumatise an enemy he would rather not directly face, Simcoe questioned why he longed for them to return to those days. He wondered if as a teenager, Hewlett really sat back twirling contraband wine in crystal glasses and making snippy remarks whist Simcoe justly wondered despite his derision if he himself was going to live or die.

He questioned if in the years since Hewlett had developed any sympathy for him at all.

No. Of course not. He had no pity or mercy. All of his fears were doubts pertaining to how others might see him. Yet, Hewlett did not have to worry. He had what he wanted; what Simcoe assumed everyone wanted. Whatever it was, Hewlett got away with it; and Hewlett was revered.

And I? Simcoe asked. Out of all of the people Miss Ingram knew, she had chosen to cast him as her story’s main villain.

Given recent events, perhaps he was one.

Conceivably, somewhere in Andre’s notes from their sessions - which she doubtlessly had access to one way or another- reference was made to his rage. If Andre had said anything to him at any point, Simcoe reasoned, he could have avoid last night in its entirety. He listened to doctors. He followed their fingers with his eyes upon instruction until they had finished that part of their examination. He took medication as prescribed. He was very good at this. If Andre had been a real doctor, Simcoe reasoned, he could have learned to let his disagreements go prior before letting them go too far. He could have calmly walked out of the bar last night, met Mary Woodhull on the sidewalk and offered her a cigarette and a few minutes reprieve from what must have been a tedious marriage. Benedict Arnold could have stayed inside. Stayed alive. Ruined American politics or someone else’s night by discussing his whist the Culper Ring ruined music.

Simcoe could have been whole.

His ear stung. He asked for some ice as he bought himself a third cup of tea, promising the barista one more that after more than twenty years of drinking the stuff somewhat religiously he still could not tell the subtle differences between Early Grey and English Breakfast. He looked at his phone. It was still too early to order anything for Mary, and he still did not know what she liked. He sent her a text. She did not reply.

Unable to return to his reading, he was still staring at his messenger when Mary arrived. She was early. In her cuffed skinny jeans and loose sweatshirt, she was lovely. He rose to greet her.

“What are you wearing?” she asked in the tone Hewlett had used earlier.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I am alright?” he sneered back.

 

* * *

 

Mary gasped, unable to remove her eyes from Simcoe’s bloody, bandaged ear and bruise stained neck as he pulled back his thick red hair. Her lust was markedly misplaced. As she counted the kisses she had given him to herself, she unwittingly calculated how long it had been since her lips had last lightly grazed those of her husband.

Christmas?

She had been alone on Valentine’s Day, opting to spend the night watching _Versailles_ with her French-speaking au pair as opposed accompanying Abraham and his band to whatever hole-in-the-wall was serving as their venue. He had invited her. She was every bit as guilty as he was for letting blame fill the hole in their marriage love had once occupied.

Looking at John’s scars, she faulted herself for all of the sins she imagined her husband committing against her.

He smiled; she returned it hesitantly. At his beaconing, they embraced. It had to look real, Mary told herself as she pressed her small frame against his warm chest, closing her eyes as she inhaled his musky cologne, lingering between dream and disgrace for a moment too long until she felt his arms release her. It had to look real. It only felt real because everything else in life seemed to be a waking nightmare.

After ordering herself a small vanilla latté, she accompanied him back to his car. While changing his bandage - which she insisted upon against light protest - she told him the Thomas had mimicked the very actions that had resulted in injury that day at school and as such had suspended until the following Monday. She hoped the other little boy was as badly hurt.  At this, Simcoe smiled again. Mary explained she had later told her husband and his father that there was an E. coli breakout in the cafeteria and no one thought enough to question it; or, what she reluctantly noted was more likely, no one thought enough of either her or Thomas to be bothered to do so.

“I’ve spent much of the day thinking about you both,” he piqued in reply.

“Extenuating circumstance aside.”

Their eyes locked and he stared into hers too deeply and too long as seemed to be his nature. Mary found it slightly disconcerting that she could not find any emotion behind them.

“How was your day otherwise?” he asked.

“Alright,” she answered.

The Arnold disappearance had reduced the reported embezzlement in an East African branch of the organization that employed her to a bullet point on page 23 of _The Times_ and no other organization seemed to be running it. Neither was the internet interested. Mary had been praised for her work though she had actively done nothing with the intent of burying bad press. She used her good credit to step out early after the incident with her son, as Aberdeen and Abe were being made to wait at the police station in a classic Smith power play.

“She won, in the end. Anna’s mother, I mean. I talked to Edmund before heading out; apparently your manic pixie dream girl has moved on.”

“Don’t talk about her that way.”

Mary thought she had been generous, delicate even. She frowned. Simcoe continued. He told her in a tone she assumed he usually reserved for business dealings that after Hewlett had been arrested, he had gone to police headquarters to offer character testimony. By the time he was finished relaying what was discussed and where it left them all in the eyes of the law, the sky had grown dim.

“And then, whilst waiting for you to show, I was sent this,” he said pulling up a picture of the tavern on his phone. “From _The Sun_. From tomorrow.”

Mary read the accompanying article. There was not much context beyond that DeJong’s was the last place the senator had been seen.  Police were making inquiries; an arrest was made, the suspect realised. “What does your … friend,” she paused, waiting in vain for a response, “mean with ‘ _property?_ ’” she questioned, scrolling through the text massages that followed.

“That he assumes I’ll be looked into at some point over the course of this investigation because of my interest in purchasing the bar,” he sighed.

Mary worried there was something he was purposely neglecting to disclose.

“No need for concern, Mrs. Woodhull. I might clarify - Hewlett, presumably, asked his family for money before coming to me. Then he rung a friend in publishing after being refused yet another loan, alerting certain segments of society as to the actual location of the crime scene. No one will much care outside of a small number of oligarchs who are more excited over a faux pas on my part. The population at large will likely continue to have their imaginations wound up by islamophobia and nationalist sentiment. As it goes.”

“You are buying the bar?”

“After you did such a good job cleaning it I saw it had … potential.”

The fear Mary experienced while walking with Simcoe on a long stretch of road by the forest returned with force. She ought to have told someone – someone other than Edmund Hewlett - where she was going. She turned away as Simcoe started the engine, his fingers tapping against the wheel. If the passenger door had not lock automatically, she would have tried to escape. Why, she screamed at herself, why had she insisted upon searching for the cell phone Simcoe had so carelessly tossed out of this very window? Forensics would find his fingerprints before hers. If the phone were found, or any trace of her found on it, she could have dreamt up an excuse.  Mary rolled the window down as the vehicle left the car park.

Feeling his unblinking eyes crawl over her, she started, “I don’t normally smoke but -” halting when he passed her a nearly empty package of Gauloises with a Bic stuffed inside. Abe, she recalled, had not confronted her when he presumably smelled the ash on her that morning when he came home after sunrise with a weak explanation. Mary lit a fag for herself and one for the man beside her.

“You are tense,” Simcoe observed after a few minutes of driving in uncomfortable silence. “I don’t wish to frighten you, Mary. Your protection remains chief among my prerogatives. I ought not to have shown you the article. I’ve let it put me in a rather unpleasant mood, I regret.”

“No, it is good that I know.”

Silence settled. Mary pushed the CD into the player it jutted from and remembering that Simcoe had somehow come into possession of an early copy of Culper Ring’s yet-to-be-released record, she skipped to the one song on the album she liked, something Abe had written while watching Thomas play. She swallowed, promising herself that life would soon return to normal, wondering if Simcoe was doing the same, wondering what he would do with his life after their ‘affair’ ended and she lost his number and time and the misuse of controlled substances erased him from her mind. She scrolled through the photographs on the phone she was still holding, noting that without any context he seemed normal. He probably was, she reasoned, under otherwise normal circumstances.

“Do I frighten you?” he asked as he pulled into a roadside car park designated for hikers.

“I frighten myself when I am around you.”

“It is not nearly as bad as it looks,” he smiled, adjusting his hair and collar as to cover his contusions.

Mary paused on one of the thousands of photographs she had scrolled through, “Who are they anyway? The Hewletts?”

Simcoe avoided the question. “Oh, that with the paper crowns? That is from last Christmas. Old English tradition of playing with mild explosives at the dinner table. You don’t have them in America, do you – Christmas Crackers?” Without waiting for her to respond, he continued, “This may seem an odd line of inquiry, but are you much acquainted with sport in the proper sense?”

“I fear you have me at a loss, John.”

“Quite.”

He walked to the back of the SUV, proceeding to hand her a flashlight to carry and one to wear on her head, as well as a light reflective vest. “Hunters,” he clarified.

“You’ve certainly come prepared.”

“It has to seem authentic,” he said. “I, to be completely honest Mary, I am a little surprised that you did not think to bring any supplies.”

“Oh, you have me all wrong.” She opened her bag to reveal a blanket, scented candles, lubricant, fuzzy handcuffs and the condoms he had purchased at the petrol station the night before. “Were meant to be on a wild romp. It has to seem authentic,” she echoed, laughing upon seeing his expression.

“So, the Hewletts,” he responded, admitting that he was suddenly keen to talk about anything that did not lead him to imagine Mary and Abe tying each other up in the act. That she had never played out these fantasies with her husband despite her yearnings, Mary kept to herself. She continued to giggle but halted as Simcoe’s voice grew higher and expression hardened, “The Hewletts are neo-cons posing as bleeding-heart-liberals. The richest and most powerful family in the north. A Shakespearean tragedy and a dynastic mess. Our Hewlett –Edmund, that is – he’ll still be able to get away with murder despite his fall from grace. Spoiled narcissist who wants to show us all up. I’m certain that is half the reason that he is so anxious to give himself up as a suspect, that, or.”

“Or what?” Mary asked, remembering that Simcoe had all but framed him; remembering that Hewlett had framed himself. She took a step back. Nothing about John Graves was normal.

Simcoe took pause. He blinked - the first time Mary had seen him to do. He was nowhere, she noted, when his gaze was not focused. For a fleeting moment, his air of indifference felt forced.

“I am aware of how I sound when I talk about him. Mary, I assure you, it is not what you think.”

“I don’t think anything,” she lied, thinking it was in her better interest to run away without inquiring further.

“He tried to kill himself. Recently. I’m the only one who cares at all and I don’t know what to do with that. I'm over a barrel. Everything he has done since seems designed to my torment. I don't know what to do with that, either.”

Simcoe stretched after putting on a jacket and asking if she was warm enough.

Mary felt the fibres of her borrowed sweater itch against her skin.

 

* * *

 

The woods were quiet at night. Aside from the sound of the occasional car driving by, Mary heard nothing. She expected the hum of insects, the short battle cries of nocturnal predators, the wind to whisper between the still-bare branches, twisted to hide the pathway from the sky.

Nothing.

The night was still. The night was silent. Simcoe, whose high, dark voice had filled the void for the past half hour, had not spoken since Mary had snatched his phone.

His response to the series of images Anna Strong had sent had been remorseful chastisement _. “You wrong me,”_ he had said. No, Mary thought, dear Anna, you wrong us all.

She had not let Anna get much of a word in when they briefly spoke. Her pictures said thousands, after all. They said, ‘ _I’m thirsty and you are irrelevant._ ’ They said, ‘ _This is what breasts should look like_.’ They said, ‘ _Watch out Mary, your husband could be next_.’ Finally, they said, ‘ _I’m either unaware or uninterested that my fiancé could well be lying dead in the flat over your garage. There will be others to replace him._ ’

Mary pitied the depths to which her former friend had sunk. She pitied John, Edmund, and all the other men Anna might meet at the bottom.

As was evident from the selfies, Edmund Hewlett had never made it out to Brooklyn. Mary wondered if rather than heed her advice of chocolate and flowers he had opted for a heavy helping of the pills whose recreational usage he cautioned her against mentioning to John.

Now she knew why she had been warned.

Mary suddenly wanted very much to go home, cook a proper meal and ask her housemate if he wanted to dine with her and watch _Star Trek_ or _Torchwood_ or _Downton Abbey_ or whatever might appeal to his taste. She suddenly realised she had no idea. They were in the same hell, she reasoned, all of them. It might be beneficial to make some effort toward one another.

Mary sent a WhatsApp to Aberdeen, asking her to make sure Mr. Hewlett was alive and if she was not too busy with her course work, to hang out with him for a while. She would compensate her for any hours spent watching Japanese cartoons or British drama.

Aberdeen wrote back that Mr. Hewlett just left, they _had_ been hanging out, and if she might get paid for listening him talk about mathematics? Mary sighed deeply. She would slip her au pair a twenty. They were all in the same hell.

She looked over at John and saw that he was completely lost to the task. So far, their search had yielded no results. Mary gave a vague apology. She felt guilty in ways she could not define and was frightened to reflect upon.

“I’ve had girls look at me like that before. It not desire. It is not anything. She isn’t anything but hurt and you’ve made it worse,” he sneered. 

“She will be fine. Girls like that get up again.”

“She lost everything over the course of a day. Because of me. Because of us. And you? You wound me madam.”

“I’ve let my envy of Anna Strong ruin my life before.”

“And mine. Mary! Why would you do this?”

“Why? Really John? Don’t you think her phone might be bugged? She is engaged to the chief suspect in the missing persons case involving the man that you and I made disappear. Our alibi is that we were in a motel on the Connecticut side of the boarder in the thrusts of a torrid affair. Thanks to you, Hewlett knows that much. It is only a matter of time before my husband gets word of it. You have little to lose, but I may stand to lose everything. And you would throw it all away on a selfie? No. It is fake. Even you know it is fake. From what you told me, Anna has never reciprocated your affections. It has to look realistic – from our side, if not from hers. I have to protect us. You have made that much clear. Anyway, if she is content to hurt you, I am not content to let her. Think of it this way, I raised your stock price. Now that she knows that I’m interested,” she paused for a retraction, “or, rather, thinks I am, you’ll be the sole object of her affection. Until another man crosses her line of vision. That is how it always was and as long as I am stuck in this town –and in that house -how I imagine it will remain. But fuck it. Call her back if you feel you must.”

“I don’t.”

“Really?”

Simcoe scratched at his wounded ear. “Mary, what I told Hewlett about us, it wasn’t -”

“Forget it. I raised your stock price and you raised mine. As for my marriage, who knows. Maybe Abe will be envious if he cares enough to listen to mentions of my name. We might then last until I can drag him in for another round of counselling and another few months after that. Then he will cheat on me again. With Anna. Or Sally. Or Caleb, or someone whose name I have yet to learn-”

“Or you could leave,” he said as though it were simple.

“Where would I go? Judge Woodhull would never let me take Thomas.”

Simcoe frowned. “When you said last night you half-stayed in your marriage because of your son, I assumed you meant that you wanted to raise him in a two parent household, not that you were afraid of losing custody. I’ll look into finding you a decent lawyer, mate of mine is one of the best, it is not his branch I’m sure he knows someone who can litigate on your behalf.”

“I love my husband, Mr. Simcoe. The problem is - as it has always been- that he doesn’t love me.”

“Then why do you stay?”

“Someone must. It is enough. I thought about it. My love is enough. For me. For us. I support Abraham.”

“Financially, emotionally …”

“People who live in glass houses,” she replied, referring to a friendship. He did not deserve it. John Graves Simcoe for all of his flaws had been nothing but decent to her under the most damning set of circumstances. She should not meet his concern with condemnation. Mary Woodhull felt guilty in ways she could not define and was frightened to reflect upon.

“Yea,” Simcoe nodded in concurrence.

 

* * *

 

They resumed their search for the missing mobile in silence, walking further and further away from where his vehicle was parked. He wondered if he should have taken the GPS out of it, but they had stayed close enough to the road that they could still see the headlights of the occasional car driving by. He thought about how afraid Mary had been of him the night before, how she threatened him with pepper spray and photographs of her child. She was now clutching his arm, though he had evidently insulted her in some new way he had not intended. He looked down at her, dressed in Anna’s clothing, wearing a scent that was familiar that he could not immediately place. Casual, comfortable, so unlike the night before. She was comfortable in his presence. He wondered why he allowed this to surprise him. He questioned when the last time anyone had allowed themselves to feel at ease at his side, and if he was truly to blame.

“John,” she whispered, “John look over here.”

Mary pointed to a single footprint etched in the dry soil next to two handprints that at first glance seemed large enough to belong to the senator. It repeated a few paces later, headed towards the road. Simcoe asked Mary to pull up Google Maps and find out how close they were to DeJong’s Tavern.

“It is a five minute walk.”

The trail lead him to a tree where he found dried blood.

“I believe that Arnold has an injured, possibly broken leg. He dragged it behind him during his escape, which might serve to explain why we found no footprints by the back entrance last night, as most of his trail seems to have been swept away. There is blood on the tree.”

He looked back and saw Mary nodding in thought.

“Stay behind me,” he said as he cautiously followed the trail. “I don’t want you to have to see -”

“We didn’t kill him, John,” Mary whispered, squeezing the hand she now clutched. “We didn’t kill him.” He glanced down at her, she smiled the way she had that morning.

Simcoe did not share her elation until they followed the trail to the road. He shined his flashlight ahead. On the other side of the street, a tree had been torn in two. “Stay here,” he ordered.

“I’m coming -”

“Mary, allow me to at the very least protect you from whatever may lie across the way. This past day has been trying enough without – there are some things that can never been unseen. Stay here. I won’t go far.”

The halved tree bore scraps of rust and white paint. Blood and tyre marks covered the pavement just before the scene of the crash. Simcoe searched for more direct evidence of Arnold in the nearby forest and foliage, but none followed. Benedict Arnold was dead. He may have lead him to his death but it was evident that he had not done him in.

Abigail was wrong. Her words were lies, that is all they were.

He was not a murderer.

Neither was Mary.

Someone else could suffer that guilt.

After taking enough deep breaths the detach enough from the immediate that he was able to remember once reading about breathing exercises in a pamphlet in Andre’s office when he had been made to wait (and, to become annoyed once more at everything he could connect to that practice) he jogged back across the street.

When he returned to Mary, she was on the phone with the police.

“What are you doing?” he mouthed, questioning if he might try deep inhales again but opting for a cigarette instead.

“Cleaning up a mess,” Mary answered when she finished. “Listen to me carefully. You and I met up in secret, as we have been doing for months. Always in a different place, always under admittedly weak excuses. When we saw the footprints, you remembered the text you received about an upcoming article your friend’s newspaper and asked me to search to see if DeJong Tavern was in the area. We followed the trail to the road and rang the police when we saw where it ended. That way, if any of our DNA is found out here, it will look happenstance. Working with the police adds to our alibi.”

Euphoric at Mary’s pragmatism, Simcoe embraced her. They were still hugging when the police showed up to quarantine the area and take their statements. 

 

* * *

 

After his work was all but finished, Officer William Bradford walked back to his squad car to check in with headquarters. He repeated the story he had been told, noting for the record that it matched what one of the witnesses relayed to him last night. When he asked if there had been a recent accident on that road, dispatch told him that that last reported accident was a hit and run from a decade earlier. From when Samuel Tallmadge’s body was found.

To Bradford this was surprising. Not because he immediately recognized the surname as belonging to the Detective Chief Inspector, not because alone the scale of the crash looked as though it warranted record, but because a sedan drove past the police barricade so swiftly while he was waiting for a response that he found it unthinkable that more accidents did not happen on this particular stretch.  Bradford had spent much of his career as a traffic cop, and after this one incident would return to giving speeding tickets and pulling over ethnic minorities at traffic stops that he would continue to promise were random and routine.

In the months and years that followed, he would brag to his colleagues about having assisted in the Arnold Investigation. He would wear this moment as a badge of honour when the Pennsylvania senator was later appointed Secretary of Defence under the Trump administration. He would use this as a pick up line, as an attempt to get a round purchased for him in the local pub, which, by the end of the year would have changed possession three times in quick succession and changed its name to Strong Tavern. The bartender would explain with a playful roll of her eyes the name was chosen because everything else in the town was already called Hewlett. Bradford would never make anything of that. Instead, he would change the topic back to himself, Arnold, and to real red-blooded American sports when a crowd came in to watch something he deemed _prissy_ and _European_ (words he considered synonymous.)

He would never know how close he came to apprehending the actual culprits.

Instead of giving Mary Woodhull and John Graves Simcoe a second thought, he yelled out to ask if anyone had clocked the vehicle that just passed.

 

* * *

 

“My husband. No. My husband just drove by in my father-in-law’s car,” Mary Woodhull pressed her lips together and sulked. “What is he doing out here at this hour?”

“Maybe he is looking for you,” Simcoe replied with feigned detachment. “We should probably head back.”

Mary ignored his suggestion, electing instead to succumb to the very paranoia she otherwise recognized as detrimental to the state of her marriage. She checked her phone, declaring that throughout the entire course of the night Abraham had made no effort to inquire as to her whereabouts. “What is he doing out here if Anna is naked in Brooklyn?” she asked rhetorically.

Simcoe did his best to ignore the slight against the woman he had long claimed to neutral parties was his significant other. He tried instead to console the woman beside him - who until a few minutes before had simply been his accomplice - as she clearly required. He put his hand on her small shoulder and gave it a gentle pat, continuing to awkwardly do so until she looked up at him, frowning, and said, “Maybe it isn’t Anna I need to worry about. Maybe he already has another. In fact I am certain of it.”

Simcoe wondered how anyone could honestly come to this particular assessment of Abraham Woodhull’s allure. To his mind, the grounds on which Abe and Anna had dated during high school owed themselves exclusively to Setauket’s population size. By Mary’s own admission, they had only married because of their child. Were Woodhull forced back into bachelorhood in his thirties, Simcoe was certain the ferret would have as little luck in love as anyone else he knew. He said none of this aloud, instead opting to pull Mary into a loose embrace and tell her, “He is a fool for not calling. You are incredible, Mrs. Woodhull. You saved us. Thank you.”

“It was a group effort,” she weakly smiled back. “I’m sorry I’m just – it is too much. Not just Arnold, everything. Anna moving in with Edmund, then breaking up with him not twenty-four hours later. Abe not coming home last night. You know what his excuse was? He said that he went over to Sam Townsend’s place to play chess with Rob. Chess! In the middle of the night.”

“Take it this way – in that case, he likely had a less pleasant evening than you and I. I know Robert Townsend from this restaurant my mates insist on frequenting. I would place money on the idea that he devastated your husband, which isn’t even to mention -”

“I really doubt that is what he was doing. It is just such a dumb lie to tell.”

“Perhaps then it is the truth.”

Mary pulled back, staring at him inquisitively. “Glass houses, John. Are you at all prone to believing in the good of mankind?”

She had a point. Simcoe thought the worst of people who glanced at him the wrong way while passing by. His friends were all enemies and his trust was thin. He did not believe Mary, for example, when she said that the love she bore her husband was enough to sustain her.

“Absolutely not. That said, my offer still stands. As I mentioned earlier, a mate of mine is one of the best lawyers in the city-”

Mary shook her head.

“I, John don’t take this the wrong way,” she interrupted, “can we maybe do something normal? You and me. Together, at some point? No talk of what might have happened last night, no talk of love and rejection. Just, normal?”

“Normal?”

“The bar is pretty low,” she forced a small grin. “Maybe if you have time we can keep meeting for coffee. My office isn’t far from yours. You are kind. I know you have had problems with my husband in the past, I know I’ve hardly been generous to Anna, and you’ve been sweet all the same.”

“We started and solved a murder mystery. I think it gets easier from there.”

“Friends?” she extended her hand. He was loath to release it.

“Certainly. We’ll do normal. Together. Why not? I’ll read Austen and you can explain how I am misinterpreting her.”

“You can explain sports to me and be as patronizing as you please.”

Normal, he smiled. John Graves Simcoe questioned when he had last fanaticised about normalcy. The engagement, the fight, the loss, the kiss, the illegal envelope and the millions it happened to contain, the interrogation, the news, the periodical, or a combination of all of these factors had unsettled him enough that simple desires seemed unobtainable. It was a wish he could not put into words for when he tried he was always met with the apathy and indifference of those whose base goals were far loftier. Few recognized it as a privilege in itself. That day, Simcoe had wondered if he would ever again find himself in a situation that would allow him hope of that which had so long been absent from his life he questioned if he had ever known it.

Normal, he realised as Mary spoke of sport, was as improbable as finding an American able to comprehend the league table.

Though she had no way of knowing it, Mary Woodhull absolved him of all of the criminal activity he had reluctantly perpetrated since the moment they met. Numbers and figures began to form codes and formulae in his imagination. Should his recent trades and purchases require and explanation, he now had one ready.

“John?”

 “Americans … Americans truly don’t understand sport and you can’t explain it to them. Mary, you’re a genius.”

“How so?”

Both unable to explain how a fundamental disagreement with a suicidal astrophysicist over what constituted as maths and a shared interest in the beautiful game had led to tens of thousands of heavily abbreviated texts sent since the start of the fiscal quarter and unwilling to involve the lovely Mrs. Woodhull in another legal transgression, Simcoe declined to answer in words. Instead, he bent down and kissed her on her forehead. She grabbed him by his hair and brought him down to her lips. He took her by the waist and lifted her up to his level, pressing her against a thick trunk for balance as he felt her squirm against his pelvis. When her tongue unchained his, she spoke.

“I don’t want to have an affair, John.”

“Nor do I.”

Gone were the equations he was making as she kissed him again. Gone were his usually present moral protests. It is just release, he told himself. Were just friends. I’ve kissed my friends before. It holds no meaning. That is all this is.

Only afterwards - after they spent another forty minutes walking the quarter mile back to his car, after discussing prose and poetry and dreams that feel apart, after attempting to explain the offside rule and reminding himself what he had to do when he got home - did he realise that his eyes had been open and on her the entire time.  

John Graves Simcoe had been kissing Mary Woodhull and not someone he forced himself to pretend was Anna Strong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No contextual notes this go around (though you won’t be so lucky next time, go brush up on your knowledge of … never mind. No spoilers.)
> 
> Except for one. Early on in this chapter Simcoe was texting “a sadist he boarded with” – remember that when next we meet.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are appreciated, as is your readership! Wishing each and every one of you all the best. I know you guys in America have Thanksgiving soon, and I hope you all have a lot to be thankful for. (German and UK readers too, naturally. Wherever you happen to be reading from, I hope it is a happy place.)
> 
> XOXO - Tav
> 
> Up next: Mary and Simcoe enter onto Ben’s list of suspects, Abe’s view on his marriage, Simcoe and Hewlett have it out, Akinbode is all too ready to desert and travel north, anarchy in the UK


	18. The Break-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben expands his list of potential suspects; Simcoe schemes against Wall Street, fights with his feelings (and in a more literal sense, with his friends ...); Abe compartmentalizes; Hewlett’s admissions effectively end the possibility of a happiness that could have been; and Akinbode conspires to reduce collateral damage.  
> Meanwhile in Britain, an M16 agent plots with a drug lord to ensure that when an influential MP dies on Easter Sunday, there will be a smooth transition of power and business will continue as usual. The missing American Senator threatens their plot, as does the birth of a prince.
> 
> Gee … Benedict Arnold really did pick a horrible time to disappear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is my BIRTHDAY and I have Trigger Warnings galore for you this go around, lovely faces: Do you remember how back in nearly every previous chapter reference has been made to an attempted suicide? This chapter addresses it pretty head on, so heads up. Remember when _The Three Lions_ beat _Les Blues_ in one of Simcoe’s flashbacks? Hewlett sure does, and that comes up as well. 
> 
> The end of the chapter contains extremely disturbing content. It is mostly about inheritance laws but honestly, if you are at all squeamish you may way to skip that section in its entirety. (Just maybe read the last line of dialogue.)
> 
> And … on to the basics: minor character death, murder, suicide, politically charged conversation, bad coffee, adultery, addiction, suspicion, rejection, violence, bigotry, misogyny, sex and sexuality, drugs, maths, football, corporate crimes, etc. 
> 
> Still with me? Hope you enjoy!

There was no evening traffic, yet the drive to Long Island felt like an age all unto its own. Ben Tallmadge sat on the passenger side watching the lamp posts blur and they sped past whilst an officer who was also familiar with the backwoods drove.

He knew the street quite well. Every autumn, he parked his car on the emergency lane of the same stretch, cleaning debris from his brother’s memorial as cars drove by impervious to his anguish and seemingly ignorant to the posted speed limit.

His parents could not bring themselves to visit the site of their older son’s slaughter on or in the weeks surrounding the anniversary of the event. Ben doubted that his mother had been on the road since the accident. She had not been his mother since. In the months that followed her tearful identification of the victim, she stayed in bed, curtains drawn, wallowing in her loss. Eventually, his father stopped sleeping beside her. They still had separate bedrooms. It still broke Ben’s heart. He avoided the street whenever he could; adding half an hour to his weekly commute to the church where his father preached and his mother played lead the children’s choir.

When he saw the white cross bearing his brother’s name illuminated in the squad car’s headlights, he wondered when he had last prayed. Certainly, it had not been at church.

“I left straight way, when I got the call, Sir,” Baker started, “there wasn’t – I mean – I don’t know if this has anything to do with Arnold. The wreck must have happened after he was reported missing.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t connected. I grew up in a town like Setauket. Not far from here, actually. There are no coincidences, only connections and people with reason to want to conceal them,” he answered, exhausted. Ben felt like he had been giving the same defence of the scope of his investigation since it had been assigned to him. The words ceased to carry their meaning as they transitioned from comment into chorus. “As, I suspect,” he continued, “is also the case with our driver. We will get forensics out for analysis. If any trace of Arnold is discovered-”

“Sir,” Braxton interrupted from the backseat where Ben had left his bag. “Mr Sackett is on the line. Apparently, the Woodhull – Simcoe affair pans out, and Hewlett confessed to embezzling millions from a charity run by his parents.”

Ben blinked. It was not the news he had awaited or would have ever come to expect. From the sounds of it, his team had just scored yet another enormous victory for the side of justice. Another victory, he bemoaned, that had little or nothing to do with the case that his commissioner, chief, city and the country as a whole had set as his sole prerogative twenty or so caffeine-fuelled hours prior. He closed his eyes for a moment, questioning if his efforts would not have been better employed elsewhere.

“Phone?” Ben requested.

“Sir?” Braxton replied, knocking against the grid metal separating them.

“Tell him I will ring him back as soon as we are done here. No – tell him that too, of course. Also - tell him to forward an audio file of everything Hewlett gave up to ADIC Hamilton and the feds. If nothing else, it might aid in helping the director in his quest convince the embassy to release Hewlett’s records.”

“That is what they were thinking, Sir,” Braxton relayed after repeating his request. “I was advised to tell you tell you that John Graves Simcoe – who has provided two sworn statements to the police, one just now and one down at the station earlier – was questioned last night when he was found on the same road which the possible trail leads to and on which a possible accident occurred.”

“That doesn’t sound like mere coincidence,” Baker mused, echoing Ben’s thoughts.

“Russo and Yilmaz put this in their report, Sir.”

He turned back to the driver, “Baker, you live in Setauket, if I am not mistaken?”

“I do, Sir.”

“What do you know of Mary Woodhull?”

“Only that she is the one who lead us to the trail.”

“And she was Simcoe’s alibi for why he was out here last night,” Braxton interjected, being fed information from the phone Ben could not reach. It was useless to put it on speaker. The signal was poor, the speaker on the other end barely legible. Braxton continued to relay Mr Sackett’s words after asking that he repeat them several times. “Married to Abraham Woodhull, the son of New York’s esteemed Chief Judge. Works public relations for UNICEF.  Domed with Anna Strong during her three semesters at NYU around seven or eight years ago.”

Ben nodded, “So Mary Woodhull, a charity worker with presumably no training in forensics - while out on a romp with an illicit lover - found dried blood in low lighting, or, put otherwise, found a possible lead that CSI missed working the area all day?”

“Are you saying we are to treat her as a suspect?”

Ben cleared his throat. “Let’s see if we can’t get the ADA to extend the search warrant to the entire property.”

He could already hear the District Attorney, her assistant and the Police Commissioner urging him to tread cautiously. Judge Richard Woodhull was too powerful of a man to risk unduly antagonizing. The team had no solid evidence against his daughter-in-law that he could name.

Still, he justified to himself – a high-profile politician was missing.

As they pulled up to the second crime scene he has been to that day, Ben was all but certain that said high-profile politician was dead. He swallowed, “Alright guys - listen. After we finish here, I want you to both go home and get some rest. Tomorrow - Baker, I want you to trail Mary Woodhull, find out everything you can about her. Braxton, visit Columbia - see if you can coordinate with Dandridge. I want to get her take on good ol’ John Graves given what we have learned.”

 

* * *

 

_It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife._

John Graves Simcoe read the first line of the book that had just finished downloading and decided it was the better of the two novels he had started that day. The classics were classics for a reason, and though as he skimmed he first page, he still believed that reason to be the date of publication, he was willing to give Jane Austen a chance. Simcoe was, after all, a single man in possession of quite a good fortune – and he was in _want_ as it were. He wanted normalcy. He wanted escape. He wanted to talk to someone who could make sense of it all - which was to say - that in spite of that which he suspected of having recently transpired in a certain private practice; he wanted to tell John Andre about Mary Woodhull. No one else he knew had the sorts of experiences that might yield sound advice.

He need not tell everything, of course. Not everything warranted explanation or evaluation. The circumstances under which they met were now irrelevant. Ironically, his strange relationship with Mrs. Woodhull had been easier with a body between them, a physical barrier to their loneliness and a threat to their liberty. With their hands washed of the greater guilty, they were just two people, too desperate to retain a connection that had lost its form and function.

He did not know what he wanted from her.

He did not know what to make of the kiss that he could still taste after four cups of Yunnan tea which he drank since returning to his flat.

He could think of nothing but the force of her soft lips.

Numbers and words alike blurred as he looked at them. He would have blamed it on exhaustion if his mind were not otherwise so alive and alert with undefined hope that he was tempted to characterize as anxiety. Perhaps it had been Mary Woodhull all along who had made him nervous. Not Arnold. Not Hewlett. Not Tallmadge, Dandridge, or the sadistic garrison captain of popular fiction. Accusation, blame, derogation, and slander, all of which he felt were baseless (even when presented with evidence to the contrary) were common enough themes in Simcoe’s daily life that he failed to internalize them. But Mary? Mary was extraordinary. Mary looked death in the eyes and announced she had a plan. Mary kissed with such ferocity that his neck looked as though it had met a noose. The kisses she gave him when no one was looking, when no one would benefit, it was those that ultimately robbed him of breath. Hours later, he had yet to recover his loss.

He needed advice, but Andre had checked himself into rehab, and Andre had long ceased being a friend - a distinction, Simcoe noted, which he did not assign lightly and was quick to revoke. In this case, he thought bitterly as memory recalled the last time he had brought the doctor a conundrum, it had been all too necessary. There had to be someone else.

Simcoe put down his tablet, minimized the stock ticker on his mobile and scrolled through his personal contact list. He found it full of functional adults who would not understand his clandestine and thoroughly confused questions of desire; and of otherwise close confidants whom he either could not speak to on this matter or whom could not physically or emotionally comprehend his dilemma.

His thumb rested on the doctor’s number whilst his other fingers tapped against the case without his being aware. The two had never – nor would they ever- have the sort of easy understanding that he had come to share with Hewlett and Akinbode. Given their slow fall-out, he could not simply ring and say _I’ve something that might entertain you_ and expect from Andre attention and advice after an appropriate round of mockery and judgement. Akinbode, alas, belonged to the category of normal, functioning adults; Hewlett had been medicated into a monastic life; and Simcoe, by stark comparison, had grown embarrassingly stiff reading the work of a long-dead spinster and thinking of the delightful woman who had recommended the novel while cleaning up the scene of a crime.  

Mary Woodhull was passion and pain, she was the personification of lusts and fears he had never recognized himself as having. She was salvation.

She was also, as his luck would have it, married.

She was married, he thought, to a man of humble means who for all intent did _not_ seem to be in want of a wife.

The world was mocking him.

His friends would not understand.

He barely did.

Simcoe set the phone down, deciding it was better not to try to call the only man he knew in knew on this side of the world capable of feigning empathy for his plight. He hated him too much at the moment, he reasoned, to hear what he might have to say.

The predicament in its entirety caused him disquiet. He tried to escape from his thoughts by returning to his digital copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ ; reading without connecting, growing annoyed and ultimately deciding he instead needed a physical copy that he could mark and fold and bend at will. He resolved to purchase it at the bookshop where he had arranged to meet Mary the next day on their lunch hours. The prospect of seeing her filled him with a feeling he was hesitant to define. Experience, however, told him that she did not –and would never - feel the same way.

Mary repeatedly said she wanted ‘ _normal_ ’, Simcoe decided that what he wanted was a real drink.

 

* * *

 

He looked in his refrigerator only to find a number of items that needed to be tossed away in the interest of public health. He stared at the continents, hoping he would spot a bottle of ale if he failed to blink.  His efforts proved gainless. Among the wine and hard cider he had taken from the tavern (as no self-respecting man should think to drink grape or apple juice when there was otherwise beer to be had); Simcoe found a slice of leftover pizza from Monday and a bottle of flavoured Coffee Mate he had purchased for some pumpkin-spice-based American holiday. It had expired in January.

It gave him an idea.

He opened the icebox and removed a bottle of Linie Aquavit, which, together with a bag of frozen peas comprised his emergency first aid kit. Pouring a goodly amount into a lightly used mug, he opened a cupboard to retrieve a coffee pad only to find that the box was aggravatingly empty. He stared at the Norwegian schnapps and decided that without anything to dilute it, if he let the shot long enough it would grow warm and he would have to taste it as he swallowed. By this, he could and would not abide. He drank, letting the alcohol numb his tongue and send shivers through him as it descended.

He could still taste Mary’s cherry flavoured lip balm.

 He could still feel her in his fingers. Fingers, he noticed, which were tapping lightly against the ceramic cup. Maybe this was what drove men like Andre to finish bottles of forty-proof. Part of him wished he could. He looked at his watch. In less than four hours, he would have to explain a complex code to Hewlett who would undoubtedly question the basis of his equations and to Akinbode who would undoubtedly tune them both out, making small, snide comments to himself. Simcoe thus did not have the appropriate window in which to drink away Mary Woodhull, nor was he entirely certain that he wanted to.

Again, he found himself missing John Andre. Again, he found himself missing the idea that he and Mary had been together responsible for Benedict Arnold’s death. Without an aim, they were adrift. Mary wanted ‘ _normal_ ’, whereas he wanted to protect her from the threat of the people she claimed to love.

 

* * *

 

He paced the length of his open flat after pouring water in the electric kettle for a fifth and final cup of tea. His walls were bare, the few photographs and personal trinkets he kept remained stuffed into the books he was reading at the time they were taken or were given to him. He had been meaning to do something about them for years but he had never found the time. The pictures did not need to hide in the text. The notes Simcoe left in the margins let him know enough about who he was when he first encountered the work and who he was afterwards. He decided as he had before that he ought to have more of a visual display of the life he had lived. He would never find time to decorate.

When he first moved to New York, he had purchased a grand piano, which now sat in the centre of the enormous living space as the sole object of personal attachment. He had never touched it. In London, he had inherited the same model when his mother had passed and assumed that every personal dwelling in the world must have been in possession of one just like it. Before coming to the new world, Simcoe had known that particular penthouse only briefly, having spent the rest of his youth in the barracks with his father and in equally undecorated dorms while boarding and while at university. His knowledge of other homes was as quickly exhausted. He had once been to a palace where two of his friends tied the knot and another had been raised; there had been a piano in the ballroom. The girl he had once assumed he would marry owned one, or at the very least, her father did. He did not remember much of anything about the time he had spent living with his ailing godfather, but he assumed – reasonably – that he must have also processed a grand musical statement piece. He could have been mistaken. Most of his American friends who came round seemed so impressed by his that he doubted they had ever seen one outside of a concert hall.

None of them knew he did not know how to play.

He’d ought to learn, he considered, recalling the conversation he had had that afternoon with an FBI interrogator. It would spare him the trouble of buying a string instrument.

Simcoe looked down and noticed his fingers were still. He was angry that this surprised him. Perhaps the self-appointed experts were wrong and tea did not contain the same amount of caffeine as coffee. Perhaps it was the city he was in. Perhaps New York was starting to feel like a proper home, even if his flat did not yet look much like one. Perhaps it was Mary - who he briefly allowed himself to imagine would come by one day to kiss him the way she had in the woods, to be sexual and sensual for no one but him. Perhaps she would tell him where to hang the photographs of the friends he half expected he would never see again. Perhaps she would even decide to stay.

No, he thought. He was wasting time.  He should add the now boiling water to the tea bag and get back to work.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, there was not much to be done. His computer was still forming an anagram based on the slight alterations in stock price, the _actual_ results of the last eight game days of the top three tiers of British football and that what his idiot Kloppptimist co-conspirator chose to interpret from Liverpool’s lacklustre showing over WhatsApp. Simcoe had written the program at university for another intended application and it had served him well in the past. It had always existed in a legal grey area, but he had never stopped to consider the possible pitfalls beyond vague questions of morality that he had thus far been able to shake off before arriving at an answer. It was hideous, yes, that his work was being used to help Hewlett (and others like him) profit from political upheaval. Far worse, however, was that Leicester City had won three of their past four matches, all of which they were expected to lose. Simcoe curled his lip and checked the stock ticker again. It would not make much of a difference if VW did not take too big of a hit in the European markets in the next quarter. There were no perfect analogies, he told himself. There was only the hope that his assessment of America’s understanding of real sport was truly as accurate as he thought it to be.

Simcoe would explain (if it ever came to it), that after failing out of graduate school, his dear friend and teammate had come to him for financial advice. Simcoe did not have the time, nor Hewlett the funds, to warrant his taking the broken scientist on as a client directly – but general advice was free to give and Hewlett had some base understanding of how markets functioned. They had elected to write to each other in code, not in an attempt to cover nefarious trading, but rather so that Hewlett might shield himself from the shame that Simcoe figured must come with inheriting the world and blowing it on clothes and cars. He would say these exact words to the police and Hewlett would sneer, stutter, and render himself unable to offer a contradiction. They would believe them. The slight ebbs and flows of the NYSE in recent weeks correlated well enough with recent upsets in the EPL that someone with no knowledge of football could be reasonably convinced that the texts they had been sending were about the stock (and not the transfer) market. The fact that the Oyster was often wrong in his predictions and legitimately took issue with the sort of maths used to forecast results in both data samples was a great advantage.

The program stalled.

Simcoe typed.

He liquidated some of his assets and made a number of quick investments he otherwise would not have, taking a slight financial hit. The program liked this. Hewlett would be livid, which made Simcoe laugh until he thought about Abigail’s interpretation of him and forced himself to concede that there might in fact be a bit to it.

He took a sip of tea that had grown cold and decided he would rather like to return to the book recommended by the girl who had unwittingly given him the idea for the cover. Even if he could not make notes in the margins. He had to escape from thoughts of Abigail Ingram and the nightmares her words evoked if he meant to help that serpent in his stated quest to help Anna Strong. Otherwise, he would simply break has he had before and as Andre –he reasonably inferred- expected he would again. Then they would all pay the price.

When he looked at his tablet however, a notification told him that he would not enjoy an escape to an eighteenth century English countryside estate.

Someone had outbid him on the sale of DeJong’s Tavern.

Someone had put up ten times his offered amount.

He recognized the last four digits of the account number, buried his head in his hands and loudly implored a deity he did not believe in for mercy.

 

* * *

 

“Hewlett. Non, non. Je prends un café noir, s'il vous plaît. Ah! Merci. Merci boucoup.  Ah … Sorry. Hello?” said the man on the other end of the line. It seemed he had not woken him. Part of Simcoe was disappointed by this fact. Even in French, Eugene Hewlett had an air of effortless contentment to his voice that Simcoe had always resented. He could think of no reason beyond family name as to why he had instantly taken a disliking to the lad back at school, but he had managed to retain the resentment he bore him for over a decade. The entire family spoke in riddles, infuriating on its own, but more so when he considered that he had never once been lied to by a single member. Not exactly. They dealt in silences and half-truths. Conversation felt like sitting an exam in multiple choice. All of the answers were correct; his task was simply to pick the one that best answered the question. When it came to Eugene however, he was never entirely certain what had been asked.

“Right. Look mate, we’ve business to discuss,” he said flatly.

“John? John Simcoe, is that you? Are you back in London? I’ll be north of Edinburg this evening, can I ring you then?”

Simcoe questioned if his own voice was that distinct and if the youngest Hewlett would be able to continue fabricating mirth if they were face to face.

“I’m in New York.”

“I say, you’re phoning at a most un-Christian hour. What time is it there?”

“Little after midnight, listen-”

“Look mate, love to catch up - I really would - but I have a flight in twenty minutes.”

“This won’t take long. You recently made a bid on some property in Long Island that I’m urging you to withdraw.”

There was a pause. For a moment, Simcoe thought the call had been dropped. He was ready to hang up and try again when the chipper voice returned.

“Ah, yes well. I’m not sure what to tell you there, save for it truly is a horrible investment,” he drolled. “Were my brother not so keenly interested I doubt -”

“I’m buying the bar for your brother,” Simcoe interrupted. “And his future wife.” He need not add that Anna Strong would be spared from becoming his contact’s relation if he were only to withdraw. For a moment, he considered that Edmund was in some way behind this - using Simcoe’s affection for Anna to get him to commit corporate crimes from which he could only stand to benefit, while at the same time using his siblings to ensure that his now-partner ultimately lost the bid for the bartender’s heart, regardless of outside factors. It would not be completely out of character, he reasoned, but if Edmund could no longer count on the support of a mother who adored him, he likely did not stand a chance with a sibling who by his own admission saw his name as nothing more than a career path.

“Fine,” Hewlett consented, “but not for a hundred thousand. I looked into some other property in the area and overnight prices have sky rocketed. I am not entirely sure what to make of it, except to assume that the Americans are sick, all – and yes, I am including you in the assessment. Listen, I don’t know if you’ve seen the news yet-”

“Oh course I’ve seen the news. Gene, what do you possibly want with DeJong Tavern? I’m working with Edmund. We have -or rather had- it sorted up until roughly an hour ago when you put your muggy hands in it.”

“Does Edmund know this? Odd. Well, best of luck to both of you.”

“I can’t match your bid at the moment,” Simcoe admitted after a deep inhale.

“Find me something else then. I have one point two million I _apparently_ need to legitimize. Immediately,” the cheerful nonchalance vanished from his tone. “I say, you’ve really caught me at a bad time. Fabie is due any day now, and I’ve been called back to Scotland because of something I _just_ learned happened when I was five or six. Its bullocks. I’ve had to move my meeting with the Danes up as a result, which means I am flying to Copenhagen in a quarter hour to hammer out the most insignificant details of a shipping arrangement. They are going to hate what I am now obliged to say as the twin made some kind of deal with the devil a few minutes back that involves renewing a contract in Liverpool I was set to terminate. Happy though I am to hear from you, now really isn’t a good time for us to have a heart to heart,” he paused.

“I’m sorry about Anna. If she is or ever was your Anna. I would have called, but I’ll admit that I didn’t put it together until Effie Gwillim put her on the cover of a tabloid which I didn’t see until I got to the airport. I can’t really speak _for_ Edmund because I don’t really speak _to_ Edmund. Never have. Now it seems I never will.” Simcoe could not tell if he was dismissive or regretful. After a pause too brief for him to analyse what could have possibly been meant by _never will_ , Hewlett continued complaining. “But with regard to the Tavern – I don’t want it. Not in truth. I find that things will look all the more suspicious were I to buy it now, but ignoring that – the only family member I can truly claim to care for is my twin sister and,” his voice grew hoarse as he lowered it to a whisper, “you know how she earns a living.”

Simcoe had his assumptions.

“So you are hiding blood money in a bar where a murder took place?”

“That is exactly what I said, but then I have no voice. Find me something else by the time I land and DeJong Tavern is yours.”

Mine, Simcoe thought, imagining for a moment the future he had long idealized for himself.

“There is a flat above my own,” he said. “It has been on the market for months.”

“Russian mafia then?”

“I think so, but unlike DeJong’s, no one died inside.”

“Problem is mate; neither I nor Elinor can legally enter the United States. What need would we have for a flat there? What about yours in Chelsea, decide to put it on the market yet?”

He had not. He felt suddenly gross at having been asked.

“Someone died there.”

“Yea, but long time ago, ‘innit?” Hewlett responded laughingly in Simcoe’s own phrase.

With that, Simcoe remembered why he hated Eugene more than he hated the other siblings. For all of his faults, Edmund by comparison took no great pleasure in making cruel comments. Edna and Elinor likely did, but were fair and judicious in their words. Simcoe took a deep breath and decided to follow the better example. This was business.

“Say it is a wedding gift.”

“Ah! For Edmund and Anna - what so you can hear them fuck? Christ John. That is right ill. ”

“I doubt … fucking will be much of an issue.”

“Tell me, who are you more interested in?” he laughed again. Simcoe could hear in his cachinnations everyone in the upper echelons of society laughing about how he lost the love of his life to an awkward virgin whom half his football team and his entire graduating class suspected him of having inclinations towards. Suddenly he found himself again imagining Mary Woodhull, fearing the kiss she had given him would be as quickly dismissed as the one he had once given Edmund under a similar sense of elation. Fearing equally that it would not. It did not matter. If he could arrange a sale, which he was certain he could, the bar would be his and Anna along with it. It did not matter. It should not matter. But it did. He tasted Mary’s cherry flavoured lip balm and felt her weight in his arms.

“No,” Hewlett said finally after deciding that he was not going to receive an answer. “Don’t. Come back to London with your lover and surprise me there. I’ll go up to three mil on the flat and if you can get me real estate in Manhattan for that price I’ll hire you to manage my son’s trust fund. You have till I land.”

Simcoe blinked. The contract alone would ensure his promotion. He started to look for the number his former neighbour had left and continued making small talk.

“When is he due?”

“The fourteenth.” Arse though he was, the glee sounded genuine. Simcoe did his level best to match it.

“Congratulations. Have you picked a name yet?”

“Of course. Since prior to conception at that.”

“Please tell me it does not begin with an ‘E’.”

There was a reason behind this beyond aesthetic, as Edmund had once admitted. The Hewletts all had matching signatures to match their incestuous corporate dealings. It had been that way for centuries. It would likely continue for as long as the line lasted.

“You know it does,” Eugene confirmed. “Listen, I literally have to jet.”

“When you land and I’ve won,” Simcoe smiled, “tell me how you managed to get yourself banned from entering the United States.”

“That is a story that would have to be told in person. Come back or better - join me in bonne Paris. You know we could match your salary.”

“Right. We’ll be in touch,” he answered, thinking he would sooner die than give the suggestion of an offer any serious thought.

“Ah, wait,” he heard as he was about to hang up. “This is, I confess rather awkward – but can you perhaps keep an eye out for my brother? I don’t know exactly what he has gotten himself into and I never hope to learn – Ah, John, much as I loathe the fact that the two of you are closer than Edmund and I have ever been, please take a bit care, would you?” It sounded sincere, which meant little.

“It seems that has been my initiative since -” Simcoe started. He stopped. It was not his story to tell. He resented the youngest Hewlett for reminding him of an incident that he likely had no idea transpired.

“Right. There we are then. Jolly Good. Let me know about the flat. I’ll be on the ground at 8:50, which I know is something else in imperial units. I think you are meant to divide by two and then add thirty-two or -”

“2:50, Eastern Standard.” He would send a text with the number as soon as the call ended.

“Right. You’ve always been brilliant at maths. Sort it out the property for me by then and I’ll give you the bar and the account.”

“Cheers,” Simcoe replied. The line was dead.

 

* * *

 

Abe Woodhull woke up from a disjointed sleep. When he came home from running supplies to Robert Rogers (half of which he agreed were necessary to protect the senator and return him to health, the other half of which he felt simply constituted Rogers’s weekly grocery list) his wife was nowhere to be found. Aberdeen reported that she had gone to her book club when Abe inquired as to her whereabouts. He could have sworn Book Club fell on Thursdays, as the kitchen calendar confirmed.

He had spent much of the rest of the evening waiting up for her, trying not to worry about the threat Rogers made. Things like this did not happen in the America he grew up in. Statesmen with opinions that contradicted the objectives of the executive should not have to fear deadly repercussions for representing the views of their constituents. They should not have to take to ground, hiding from the police who were working in conjunction with national and foreign agents to assassinate internal opposition and perhaps then further justify a losing war. This was not supposed to happen in the land of the free. Americans were horrified and enraged when they learned that elected dictators –the Putins and Erdoğans of the world – sanctioned murder to supress dissidence. This was not what the founding fathers fought for. This was not the country he loved.

Abe had accidently found himself in a position where he could make a difference if he could keep a secret.

He justly feared every word he spoke might raise suspicion, and though he would have preferred to go directly to his room when he returned home that evening, in the interest of protecting his family there was a matter that warranted discussion. He was cautious. If he misspoke, he risked putting the entire household in danger. Luckily, his father’s tenant had gone out for the evening, something that Abe considered – especially given the day’s events – was rather odd for the recluse. His suspicion grew.

Abe was careful when speaking to his father about the fact that he did not want Mr. Hewlett around Thomas, a sentiment he was surprised to learn his father shared (albeit for reasons that had nothing to do with a botched assassination attempt.) Richard Woodhull could be pleasant when they were in agreement, and Abe had spent half the night laughing and drinking in the company of his father until the realization hit him that he was not enjoying himself in the slightest. He had again fallen into (as he often did) the role was being pressed upon him – that of his older brother, a man whom Abe had spent most of his adult life trying, and failing, to emulate.  When he felt that his father was no longer talking to him per se, he excused himself. He had to leave before Father was inebriated enough to say or imply ‘ _it should have been you’_ and he was sobered enough by these words to agree with them.

 He lied awake in bed, afraid to sleep and see his brother’s face, afraid to ring Mary as to her whereabouts, something he had never done in the past – something she had never given him reason to do. He feared that in telling her he was worried he would awaken her suspicion.

He had to keep this secret.

He had to keep his family safe.

Abe was not sure how long he had lied in wake, when he had fallen asleep, or when Mary returned. She was back, however, her back turned away from him, when he woke from the third dream he had had that night of his brother’s bloodied, broken body.

“Hey,” he said, “I missed you.”

“Who is she?” Mary responded in a whisper.

Abe saw his phone in her hand and snatched it back. His wife repeated her question. Abe again failed to answer. _She_ was Benedict Arnold, injured and on the run from the government. _She_ was the police, openly working in congruence with foreign enemies of the union. _She_ was Robert Rogers, whose vague threats would be actualized should he speak. _She_ was the fact that he had yet to figure out how to sort the situation without endangering his family.

Mary thought the worst of him. She always did.

For now, he thought, perhaps it was for the best.

“I love you,” she said

She didn’t, Abe thought.  

She loved the idea of what his father wanted him to be and could not see beyond that. He, in contrast, saw her far too plainly. There were things he loved about her, things that sufficed a marriage. They were happier, he thought, than most people. He was happy because she allowed him to pursue that which she had lost the strength to fight. She was happy because of the status the union gave her. But she was not happy with him. She did not love him and he did not love her. He wanted to tell her all of this but it was the middle of the night and his mind, was (as always when faced with their potential martial problems) somewhere else entirely.

“I don’t feel the same way,” he answered.

“That makes no difference.”

He nodded, wondering what he had done. He found nothing suspect in his phone. He hated that he had to instantly delete anything she might grow jealous over, which was to say - everything. He hated that he had to live with her envy, hated that whatever failed to exist between them caused her to imagine he had vivid designs on creating pain.

He kissed her lightly.

She pulled away.

Mary was a liar, Abe thought. ‘ _That makes no difference.’_ No. It made all the difference in the world to her. Abe was a liar, too. Mary’s fears were justifiable, if not off base. She cried as he kissed her again, promising things will be different as soon as they moved into their new house. She repeated that she loved him. Abe wondered what - if anything - she had found in his phone that made her so amendable. As she fell asleep in his arms, he wondered where she had been all evening, if she had followed him.

Rogers had to finish the house. Things would be different then. He would believe her when she said _I love you_ and he would convince her and perhaps even himself that he loved her too.

And maybe he would. Maybe it would be enough.

 

* * *

 

Edmund Hewlett let himself into the flat with the spare key he now felt guilty for possessing. From the entrance, the entire space presented itself as by design. Simcoe was nowhere to be found yet Hewlett saw him everywhere – in the piano that he never played; in the sleek, modern furniture with dark colours and harsh angles; in the stacks of old books with spines so worn their titles were illegible. Open, yet unwelcoming all the same.

He had rather liked the apartment once; unlike Whitehall, it failed to remind him of the life he had one expected to lead across the ocean wide. It was like the New York of postcards, of the daydreams in which he still engaged despite the filth and fury - despite the chill of the streets and the people who walked them. It was foreign, yet had once almost lived in this space without walls. He had almost felt alive in the city to which it spoke. In the city where he had decided he would die. The flat reminded him of that. Hewlett had once clandestinely hoped for an excuse to stay in New York. He recognized now that he had always had plenty.

No, he concluded as he walked over to the kitchen area with the block of filter coffee he had purchased at Simcoe’s request. New York was not his home. It never would be. The only thing that was now more unthinkable than staying in these colonies was bidding them farewell. Perhaps he had it backwards. It was irrelevant. What was done was done. He had simply lacked the conviction to see his actions through and was now forced to suffer their consequences. As they all were.

From the massive sheets of mirrored glass that stretched from the recycled wood of the floor boards to the flat’s raised ceiling, he could see Simcoe’s long silhouette and the shadow it cast over the streets that seemed to captivate him. He called out to announce his presence but his would-be host did not return his greeting or turn to acknowledge it. Hewlett was far too exhausted to allow this to register enough to annoy him. He filled the electric water cooker and put a teaspoon of coffee grounds into each of the two teacups he pulled from the cupboard. In the largely vacant refrigerator, he found the Coffee Mate that had been purchased during one of his prolonged stints on his mate’s sofa and vowing death or glory poured it into his cup without looking at the expiration date.

“You have to wait for the grounds to settle,” he said in greeting, joining Simcoe on the balcony.

“What is this?” Simcoe sneered at the cup he had been handed.

“The ATM declined to return my card after it declined to give me cash, there was but so much I could accomplish with the change I had left in my pocket.”

“Fine sentiment, but I ask in earnest, what is this?”

“Coffee grounds, hot water, the sugar you’ll need to swallow. The 7-11 did not have the pads you normally use and I quite nearly died in my effort to obtain it _. Thank you, Oyster_ \- or however you wish to phrase it,” he paused. “We ought to discuss that, mind. I’ll need to be able to access what little funds I have left.”

Simcoe ignored him.

“Went that badly at the convenience store, did it? Robbery?”

“Drug bust.”

“Car park?”

“Attendant. Nice town, this. Now, regarding my available balance -”

“Remind me before I go to work, I’ll have them send you a new checking card - you should receive it in two to three business days. I’ll spot you until then. You’ll need to learn how to live on a reduced budget for the next few weeks,” he smiled, clearly getting a rush out of the pain he had inflicted. “I’ve reduced your withdrawal limit to $100 per day.”

“I have a speeding ticket I need to sort.”

“You might strive to live within your humble means,” Simcoe said with a perfected nonchalance. Hewlett wondered if he had this practiced out, as he himself might were the tables turned. 

“Ah, you underestimate me now but wait until you taste the coffee.”

“Is it instant?”

“Close enough. It is a secret of higher education. I’ll remind you that I’ve been in college far longer than you opted to remain.”

“Yet I am the one with the degree.”

“I have multiple.”

“Have they gotten you far?” Simcoe’s voice piqued. Hewlett sighed.

“Taunt if you feel you must.”

He watched in anticipation as his sometimes-friend brought the cup to his lips far too soon, eyes widening as his throat contracted. Hewlett fought back a laugh. He had warned him about waiting for the grounds. Leave it to Simcoe to make an ill-advised charge.

“Oh bloody hell!” Simcoe shouted in regret. “You drink this? You truly don’t care if you live or die, do you?”

“There are a lot of anti-oxidants.”

“Don’t compare this to tea.”

“No. This stuff will actually wake you up.”

“Well, at seems we are in concurrence there.”

“ ’Least we still have that.”

“Yea,” Simcoe said before finishing the remainder of the makeshift coffee in a single gulp, grounds and all.

“Smoke?” Hewlett offered.

“I’m out.”

“Here.”

“I thought you were trying to quit.”

“I am. I bought these for you,” he replied, pulling a box of Gauloises from his coat pocket.

“Seeing that the lecture in curbing one’s spending habits is, in fact, in order -” Simcoe began to scold in the mocking tone no one had ever thought to explain made him sound impossibly more effeminate. Hewlett clenched his jaw, determined not to laugh at what he assumed was a disability. He could be nice when he wanted something. Almost.

“ _Thank you for anticipating my needs,”_ he returned in the same girlish pitch, “might also be in order here.”

Simcoe glared at him but smiled when he saw the box.

“You bought my brand.”

“I brought a peace pipe.”

“So you did,” Simcoe agreed as he opened the package, offering it to him after he first lit one for himself. Hewlett raised his hands in protest until Simcoe asked about the lovely Ms. Strong.

“I don’t believe there is really that much to discuss,” he replied as he shook the lighter he had been given. The Bic was either partially empty or it was protesting the cold. It had not been a struggle for Simcoe. Hewlett clicked it five times before it produced a flame.

“Oh, Edmund - you underestimate my appreciation for schadenfreude.”

“I would rather not think about it. What is this ‘work’ of which you spoke via text?”

“No. Later. I’ve had the night from hell and I need a break. Your brother says hello, by the way. Will you tell us a tale then?”

“Ah, yes. Fine.” He spoke of how he had shown up with carnations and a heart shaped box of Mont Cherie with the words ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ printed upon it; of how Anna initially refused to see him but her mother - now suddenly very interested in getting to know him after his arrest - interrogated him whilst Ben Tallmadge or his staffers listened remotely. “We talked for an hour that felt like ten.”

“What exactly did you say?”

“I confessed to every crime I’d ever committed or thought to commit.”

He did not elaborate. Simcoe knew. Their contemporary relationship was half-defined by an unspoken agreement to never acknowledge or discuss their youth. Hewlett remembered something Simcoe once said in response to a question a teammate put to them about why they never spoke about the mother country. _If anything good had ever happened there, we would not have found ourselves here_. His eyes had not left Hewlett’s as he answered with these words. They would not meet him now.

“What possessed you?” he whispered after a few minutes passed in uncomfortable silence while they finished their fags.

“You.” Hewlett responded simply. He eyed Simcoe with caution as he attempted to expand, “You’ll recall, I’m sure, this very afternoon, when you told me that _if our actions were discovered now, or decades later_ -”

“You paranoid little shite!” Simcoe exclaimed. Hewlett realised that he ought to have anticipated this inevitability. “I said nothing, _nothing_ to that effect. We mostly talked about association football. You think I would be so foolish as to incriminate myself? I’m standing before promotion -”

“It was needs must. They have a subpoena. Well, later I found that they are in the process of securing one.”

“You all but assured that eventuality, didn’t you?” Simcoe spat.

“I might clarify. I mentioned nothing of you or of our current understanding. Simply that I have had prior experience in such dealings. It’s not mere vanity, John. If we are discovered they will come after me and me alone. You’ve suffered enough for my sins. The police all already operating under the assumption that I’m enacting some degree of coercive control over you. I - there are times when I tend to concur with this assessment.”

“Bullocks.”

“Think what you will. You’ll not face imprisonment for my crimes. I’ve run from them for so long I’ve forgotten where I am going. You’ll find your way. You always do. Somehow.”

Lighting another cigarette, Simcoe asked, “What happened to you?” It was almost pained.

“I grew up,” Hewlett answered. “You didn’t. I don’t know which is more tragic, or if either would be tragic if we’d never met as adults.”

At this, Simcoe grew silent and again refused to look at him. After a while, Hewlett went back inside.

 

* * *

 

“Want a cup?” Hewlett inquired twenty minutes later. Simcoe came inside, trying to hide the fact that he was shaking off the cold. His face and hands were as red as his hair from the chill of the night air. Without waiting for a reply, Hewlett added a scoop of grounds and sugar to a second mug.

“I could turn you in,” Simcoe remarked.

“Ah, but you won’t. Not yet. By the time Akinbode gets here with the paperwork meant to make this all look legal, you’ll have had time to calm down.” Only Simcoe could find fury in care and kindness. Hewlett wondered how much of the perception he may have just shatter was of his own making, and how much of it owed itself to the imaginings of a scared little boy who now towed over him.

Simcoe approached, standing close enough to him that Hewlett could feel his breath, rich with the scent of processed tobacco.

“You could call the police now,” he continued. “Explain that you took $40,000 from my personal checking account without my signature expressing permission. Or wait. Call after we sign if you still feel you must. It doesn’t matter much to me. You are a man of your word and I know that Anna will be cared for regardless.”

Simcoe grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him into the wall. The crash caused the kitchen appliances to tremble, surprised and frightened as Hewlett himself was as Simcoe lifted him by the neck with a single hand. His feet kicked as they tried to find the floor. He could not breathe. It seemed he would die in New York after all.

The world stopped.

Simcoe wore no expression.

Hewlett resigned himself to his fate.

He stopped kicking. He tried to speak, attempting to forgive his friend and beg the Lord’s forgiveness for his own sins all at one, but the words he had to offer could not make it through the blockade. He felt the warmth of the tears his eyes involuntarily shed as they steamed down his cheeks.

Simcoe dropped him, shielding the eyes he could not close in his hands as he turned away, demanding to know Hewlett’s intentions.

Hewlett fell.

He could not speak as he coughed and gasped in a struggle for air.

The kitchen unit danced once more as he hit the ground. Everything hurt. He was half resolved to stay on the floor where he lied, but curiosity had the better of him and he sat up, if only to see if he still could.

“My intentions? _With Anna?”_ he asked – still coughing - when Simcoe demanded them again. “I assure you they are pure. I – I love her.” It was difficult to say to Anna. It was impossible to say to John. As he had always expected him to should it ever come up, Simcoe returned Hewlett’s sentiment with a look of betrayal. He had been dreading this. He continued, “I want to see that she is provided for and I’ve seen from the beginning that I may not be the best equipped to provide her with the life she wants. Her window of opportunity was small; mine was smaller. I made due.”

“You love her?” Simcoe shook his head. “You don’t even love yourself. You want to know what I was doing outside for so long: looking at your car.”

“My … car?”

“When did you decide to sell it?”

“When I realised that I would have to fund another year abroad.”

“You never planned to go back. I had a look through the last few months of transactions whilst diversifying your portfolio. You never set up to have the car shipped back to whatever hell from which you came, or cancelled such a transaction. You planned … you fucking planned it. You lying little shite.”

“I never granted you any such permission-”

“Why?” Simcoe demanded.

Hewlett rose, wishing that it was not in his true nature to be honest. He thought often about how painful it was for one to come to terms with having worshiped false idols. Unlike his father, he did not even _want_ to be the man that he publically played it. He questioned if that was worse still.

Of course it was.

His actions (and Simcoe’s reactions to them) proved it. He spoke. “I have no answers that will satisfy you. It happened. I’ve tried to fit it into a narrative that I could tell myself to rid me of the pain of responsibility, but the truth is I – I don’t know. I’m not sorry, I wish I was for your sake, but I’m alive. Can’t that be enough?” It had to be. He had nothing more to offer.

“No,” he responded stubbornly.

“Simcoe, let’s -”

“No. It is not enough. Not when you claim to be in love … with her. She chose you mate. You! You figure the least you could do would be to attempt to feign an interest in actually getting out of this bloody business intact, for _her_ sake – but you could give a shit, yea? Tell me is it enough to parade your empty conquest-”

“Do you think I take any great pleasure in flaunting my relationship with Anna in front of you? Shit. I’m mad for her. She is brilliant, resilient, hardworking, and determined in the face of adversary. She is the kindest most giving soul I’ve ever encountered. She is not afraid of her dreams. Do you honestly believe me blind to what an absolute treasure she is?  I love her. She is not some empty conquest, how did you come -? Ah! She is not a _conquest_ at all. It is rather uncomfortable, isn’t it? I know how you feel about her and how the entire situation must make you feel which is precisely why I have done everything to play down my affections. For your sake. Tell me, do you really want to know about every smile we’ve shared, the rush I feel when he hand grazes mine? I love her. I would lay down my life at her feet if she asked it of me.”

“But would you _live_?” For the first time, Simcoe truly frightened him.

Hewlett had never truly considered it. It occurred to him that the answer to that particular question – an answer he was not entirely certain he could supply – was the only factor for Simcoe. He imagined him pondering the possibilities for months in the sort of blind obsession that governed him when he found no other outlet. Perhaps it was an expression of guilt he was not ready to recognize; perhaps he was envious that he had no answer when Simcoe had clearly arrived at one; perhaps it was the fact that what was inquired of him was simply no one’s concern but his own, but Hewlett was suddenly furious.

“That is really what this is all about, isn’t it?” he spat back, narrowing his gaze.

“You are a coward, Hewlett.”

There it was.

“Perhaps you have me there,” he sneered.

“Stop. Fight for her, even if it necessitates fighting for _yourself_. I can deal with the fact that she chose you,” Simcoe said, “or rather, I could – I really, really, would like to imagine I could if you would only --”

There was nothing to fight for, the battle may have been won but the war had been lost from the beginning. Edmund Hewlett always seemed to be on the losing side of a crusade. Maybe it did not matter. Maybe Simcoe was right and it very much did. Either way, Anna would have her bar in the end, and he in turn would have his memories. He sighed, acknowledging another painful truth. He could have come waving the white flag, as he knew he should have done and avoided this dreaded and long-overdue discussion in its entirety. Simcoe prattled on.

“What?” Hewlett interrupted. “Honestly what? How do you expect me to fight when I haven’t a sword to wield? It is over. Anna and I. As it was always bound to be. We – I, we tried to - and I, I couldn’t, and she … ah, how should I put it? She had to amuse herself with thoughts of _you_ ,” he stressed the personal pronoun as if it were an accusation. “Yea, John. You are right, if you want to be. Part of me still prays for death.”

Simcoe stopped and stared at him hard before erupting with laughter.

Jaw clenched, Hewlett responded by inhaling deeply through his nostrils, reminded of Anna’s gut reaction when he had tried and evidently failed to explain his medical condition to her the night before. Maybe they deserved each other more than he deserved either of them.

“Oh, oh Christ. Hew. Okay,” Simcoe said when his stinging laughter subsided. “I never thought I would say this aloud, but I really wish John Andre were here. Of all the people on the planet, why should this fall to me? Listen,” he swallowed, “When you have sex, it is not like in the films. It is not a constant expression of love and attachment. Sometimes it is just like masturbation – that … doesn’t actually mean anything to you.” Hewlett nodded, annoyed. “Right. Anna could have just as well have been thinking about a film star or friend or public figure, or even you, Oyster,” Simcoe continued. “No one is immune to fantasy, and if you at least kept her thinking about the act itself, you likely weren’t underperforming as much as you might think. Sometimes I am at it, wondering I remembered to put out the wheelie bins or not, hoping that whomever I’m fucking will hurry up and fake it so I can put my pants on and leave.”

Once more Hewlett found himself struggling to form a response. “Thank you?”

“It is weird for me, too. Don’t think too much on it. I deleted the photos after I forwarded them to you, by the way.”

“Ah, um. That is rather kind, I suppose.”

“I hope when you say you have _the best intentions_ that you mean to stay – at her side I mean. She loves you. Somehow, she really does love you. It is only … she deserves to be loved in return. More than anyone.”

She did.

Anna Strong deserved all the love he had to offer.

The sentiment – especially given its source – meant the world to him. Still, Hewlett could not help but to question his rival’s motives. That simply could not be the point at which he hoped to arrive. “Why are you – I mean, I -”

“Do you remember that time we kissed?” Simcoe asked.

“When you and I -?”

“I never kissed Anna,” he shrugged.

“Wait.” Hewlett replied. It was worse than he had allowed himself to assume. He had been dreading this talk nearly as much as he had been dreading being confronted with the realities of his suicide and those of an unjust punishment he had dealt nearly two decades before. He starred at the man who, ironically or not, had referred to him as his best friend that afternoon, wondering how much he had hurt him – with and without intention. Hewlett bit his lower lip, took out his mobile and opened a Word document he had downloaded from his cloud.

“What?”

“I knew this might come up someday and I wrote a thing.”

“A … Thing?” Simcoe clarified, taking a step back. The distance between them was still uncomfortably close, Hewlett noted.

“A response, if you will. I –ah – I’m not always the best at choosing my words and this is rather delicate so I, ah yes, here: John. As a friend you mean the world to me and perhaps in an alternate universe we could have-”

“Oh, fuck!” Simcoe exclaimed, catching Hewlett off guard once more. “No! No. That is not what I am getting at – at all - but you might have answered my question in the worst possible way,” sounding sick, he took another step back.

“I spent a rather long time composing this,” Hewlett defended.

“I am sure you did, that is the problem.”

“I never meant to hurt you, John,” he continued reading, placing his hand atop Simcoe’s clenched fist in condolence.

“Remove your hand from mine before I’m obliged to break it.”

He did as instructed, continuing to read aloud.

“Christ, you are serious about this,” Simcoe muttered in disgust. Hewlett ignored him.

“If I had been in a better place, perhaps we could have found happiness in one another.”

“Well, then. It seems I’ve a tad less reason to hate Andre. How long is this going to take?”

He thought about it for a moment. “It was five pages on my desktop.”

“Fuck. Grab us a beer then,” Simcoe said as he pulled two bar stools from under the counter top. “I’m going to find a way to enjoy this.”

Hewlett set his phone down, opened the refrigerator and looked around for the beer Simcoe implied he had.

“You bought Magner’s … for me?” he asked, half grinning as he turned to face the man who was now sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar, choking on snorts as he tried to contain his laugher while silently reading from Hewlett’s device. He glanced up.

The question seemed to confuse him.

Simcoe stated, blinked (for what Hewlett concluded might have been the very first time in their history) and nodded very slowly in acknowledgement, as if the simple act of generosity over which Hewlett was inquiring caused him deep confusion. “I bought … apple juice? For you.”

“See? We could have been happy, John,” he teased.

“Sod off.”

“Do you want one? You don’t have any beer. Apropos,” he scolded, “why would you elect to chill red wine?”

Simcoe ignored him, as he often did when it came to matters of taste. “You know what - Fuck it. I’ve a bottle of schnapps in the icebox. Bring that. I’ll call out tomorrow. Work from home. I deserve it. Wakefield can write me a sick note if Human Resources asks to see one.”

“Wakefield is a paediatrician,” Hewlett replied, wondering if he had ever tried this route before.

“I can fake a limp.”

“What?”

“Pretend there is something wrong with my foot.”

“That is a podiatrist,” he shook his head in aggravation, reflecting briefly on the accuracy Simcoe’s statement gave to his speech to Ms. Smith about the importance of studying dead languages, “A _paediatrician_ is a doctor for children.”

“You did accuse me of never having grown up not half an hour ago.”

“So I did,” Hewlett noted as he poured a cider for himself and a shot for Simcoe. “So I did.”

“Bring the flask. I’ve decided to turn this into a drinking game. For every vague reference you make to something archaic, I’m taking a shot.”

“You would die of alcohol poising.” It was not an exaggeration.

“Good. So are we done?” Simcoe asked, swallowing the shot before taking the bottle by the neck. Hewlett felt at his own bruised throat, questioning if drinking with someone with such a loose grip on control was truly in his interest. Still, it seemed there were done. Everything that needed to be said had been and their fight was finished on all of its fronts. He found himself smiling.

“Ah, I suppose, unless - Shit. Slow down.”

“You did not want any, did you?”

“What is this about then?” he asked, waving his hand around the schnapps.

Simcoe put the bottle down.

“I kissed Mary Woodhull.”

“I know?”  

“Not a,” he started, grabbing at his injured ear. “It was not a fake just-for-show sort of thing. It just happened, without an agenda. I thought – or tried to think of it as - sometimes things do happen. People – friends- get excited and affectionate and ultimately it means nothing. I can’t stop thinking about her. I don’t know what to do. Especially now knowing that _if you had been in a better place, we could have found happiness in one another._ ”

They both fought – and failed - to supress a laugh. Hewlett was once more forced to admit his weakness when it came to words.

“I was being hyperbolic,” he said aridly.

“I’d rather hope,” Simcoe replied in the same tone.

Hewlett reflected for a moment, searching his soul for something to normalize the night they had shared in the fall and the one Simcoe seemed to be having now. In his defence, he had been drunk at the time. Mary Woodhull was at least a little knocked out on Xanax, something Simcoe did not need to know. He said the only thing that fell to him. “That Alli goal against France was something else though, wasn’t it?”

“Can’t argue that,” Simcoe agreed, seeming relieved. Hewlett blinked, surprised to have said the right thing for once.

“Was there a match tonight – Champion’s League or something?”

“No, we were … hiking. And anyway where would we have watched it, tavern being close and all?”

“Right, yea. Sorry. Ah, I’m not really sure how you sought to draw a comparison then, well with -”

“Wishful thinking that the kiss meant nothing to her, as I had rather let myself hope it meant nothing to you; that in the same way by tomorrow it would mean nothing to me. I don’t know how I can feel this way – I know I shouldn’t. I am certain she went home to her husband _begging_ him to take her back.”

“I don’t believe Mary Woodhull _begs_ as you put it,” Hewlett offered.

“I’m torn. I want to help her. I want to have her and I want to help her and I know that I can’t do both.”

“I am not certain, you-”

“I am though,” Simcoe insisted. “Do you remember how I strangled you? I keep thinking back to the way I was portrayed in that thing you sent me this afternoon and if that is how people see me-”

“Is that a threat or are you honestly inquiring if I recall how you had me fighting for breath this very evening?”

“The latter and … I’m sorry?”

“Well,” Hewlett took a deep breath. “Anna wanted us to fight over her anyway. Says it will throw the cops off. And … I’m sorry I pursued Anna when I knew you to be keenly interested. I am sorry I took pains to minimise my growing affection for her in front of you. I’m sorry I can’t be more help with whatever is going on between you and Mary, my relationship with all of the Woodhulls is on the rocks, I fear -”

“Are you sorry about what happened back in January?”

“No,” he answered honestly. “But I’m alive and I hope that is enough. I am deeply sorry, however, about what happened when we were at school. I always have been.”

“I know. I guess I knew. For a while. You shouldn’t be though. I’m not sorry. I’m alive and that _is_ enough. Drink?” Simcoe asked dismissively, offering Hewlett the bottle. He stared at it, indecisive. Simcoe then brought up Jane Austen out of nowhere. Hewlett took a sip of the Linie Aquavit. It was needs must.

“So are we good?” he asked. After months of tension, it finally seemed they were.

“Never,” Simcoe shook his head, reaching for the medicine, “Just better than everyone else as per your own world view.”

“Cheers then.”

 

* * *

 

The only thing objectively worse than watching his teammates fight was watching them genuinely getting on. The differences were subtle; there was no discernible reduction in ridicule and banter. All the same, Jordan Akinbode felt as though he was accelerating into a deeper inferno.

Above all, what bothered him in the small hours of this cold Thursday morning was the topic over which the two men across from him had decided to direct their conversation. From what Akinbode was able to understand, (as much of this was explained to him in what Simcoe insisted were mathematics and Hewlett swore was more of an imperfect science – to Akinbode, numbers either way) Hewlett had sold himself out in a misguided effort to spare everyone the consequences of actions they had willing taken to increase their own gains. This was due partially to an incident over which neither was exactly forthcoming. It was irrelevant.

Akinbode was concerned.  

Simcoe swore, however, that since Hewlett’s second run in with the NYPD he himself had everything figured out. He had written a program years ago that he was now implementing to find false correlations between the league table and the stock exchange. Paired with the thousands text messages the two had been sending one another over the past two months, they could argue that they had been discussing stocks in code since the beginning of the fiscal quarter. The fact that they ‘officially’ went in to business the day prior had nothing to do with the information a foreign international operative may or may not have let slide. _Nothing can be proven,_ they laughed.

They would link the program with their phones, setting a system up to send out automated coded text in a style copied from previous messages to comply with current market trends and possible speculation. They would buy burners to actually converse if need be. The program itself could then be readjusted to comply with any new information they might ‘accidently’ receive.

Akinbode was concerned.  

He listened, worried over what he had gotten himself into. The more complicated a play was, the more opportunities it had to be fouled. He directed their attention to the next page and asked them to initial, wondering how anyone could possibly have created such a complicated system whilst as drunk as they both seemed to be; wondering if that, perhaps, was the only way such a ridiculous scheme could make sense to its innovators.

The apparent reestablishment of their explosive partnership were getting on Akinbode’s nerves in other, smaller ways. For example, Edmund Hewlett’s quick outbursts of supressed rage and frustration had found a new direction, namely his.

 _They had Google you know. In the bubble you accuse me of being raised in,_ he snipped.

Akinbode was not sure what exactly he had said.  

He was not, it should be noted, entirely sure of all what his partners were saying to each other, either. Accent was only half of it; at least a quarter was obscure allusions to things they swore were British institutions.

_All I am saying is that in every crime drama, sans ‘Father Brown’, the priest is always the killer, ergo –_

_Reverend Tallmadge murdered Benedict Arnold. Must be._

_Setauket is practically ‘Midsommer’._

_Christfuck, you are right!_

_I go to that church,_ Akinbode said through clenched teeth. _Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain._ _And that you guys know, in American movies the bad guy is always the stock trader._

There was no hint of familiarity or comprehension.

 _The main villain of ‘Luther’ was an astrophysicist,_ he offered, glaring. _Let’s talk about risk and liability. If you will direct your attention to page thirty-seven-_

Alas, there was little attention left to direct. Akinbode stared at the half-empty bottle of alcohol Simcoe had once claimed was for medical use. He questioned if in drinking the remainder, he could force himself to be interested in the benign problems that seemed to be of more immediate interest to his friends than the massive act of fraud they were in the process of committing. They were calm, whereas his own pulse had not slowed since Hewlett tried to hand him an envelope in interrogation.

 _I love and I hate. Why do I do this? Poetry, Akinbode. Something to reflect on in the kitchen,_ Simcoe said in response to his offer to make them all a strong pot of coffee.

 _Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior,_ Hewlett added.

_I can actually tell that you are from Scotland when you put it like that._

_Remember when you said that we were turning into Rogers and Andre? I’ve news on that front. We are officially and unceremoniously phished at four ayy-em._

Akinbode did not understand a word Hewlett had uttered. He pretended for the sake of sanity that the little king had said he could drink a cup or five in his mother tongue. He walked over to the kitchen area, saw two teacups with coffee grounds in them and thought fondly of his time at university when his dreams had yet to fully take shape. He should have slept more back when he was at school, he noted. He never seemed to have time for it now.

Then, it had always been better to stay up until three in the morning than wake up at that hour. Maybe Simcoe and Hewlett were further evidence of this. He was almost ready to forgive them for apparently forgiving one another at what was a spectacularly inconvenient moment to his mind – the morning as a whole would have been so much quicker and simpler if they were not on speaking terms. He was almost ready to forgive them until he looked into the refrigerator on the off chance that Simcoe had purchased milk. There was none. He did not expect there to be. It was not that which troubled him when he opened the door.

Behind an expired bottle of Coffee Mate, Akinbode found three bottles of wine he knew his friend did not drink due to his moral stance on ale being superior. On the bottom shelf, he saw a six-pack of cider and the four bottles that it still contained. He nodded to himself. It was what Anna had cited in a sworn statement had been stolen from the bar.

The electric kettle switched off automatically when the water finished cooking. Akinbode did not wait for the grounds to settle as experience advised. The coffee at the precinct was comparatively worse, and he foresaw that he would be spending a lot of time waiting in interrogation for Ben Tallmadge to get his shit together with clients he was no longer certain should be entitled to defence.

Without a word, he returned to the table. He knew where Hewlett had been last night, and Simcoe said he was off somewhere having sex with a married woman. He had no reason to doubt either of them. The refrigerator was probably just an act of British humour of the same ilk that allowed the entire team to find Easton and Wakefield hilarious. Akinbode thought them among the dullest men he had ever met.  Then again, Hewlett seemed unusually keen on giving himself up as a suspect. Simcoe always seemed guilty of something.

“What’s wrong Akinbuddy?” Simcoe asked after he had allowed them a few minutes to read and sign standard forms they had both likely seen before in silence while he thought.

“Your puns get worse by the hour.”

“Harsh.”

“I don’t want to ask – in truth I don’t want to know – but it may be better if I do. What’s up with the booze?”

“It is a rather long story” Hewlett answered, “but we can suffice it to say that a complicated series of events that began with my making an attempt on my own life several months ago cumulated in Simcoe – willingly- reading _Pride and Prejudice_. I apologise for my demeanour but I assure you of the necessity of self-medication. It has been a rather long night, I dare say.”

Akinbode hoped that the entirety of what he had just been told was another joke that did not translate. “ _Pride and Prejudice?_ ” he asked, testing.

“I’m seeing someone. Sort of,” Simcoe confirmed. “What is normal?” he asked almost hesitantly.  

“The Gaussian distribution?” Hewlett offered.

“Well, its not reading chic lit that is for damn sure.”

“Mary Woodhull said she wanted something normal,” he clarified. “With me.”

“Missionary,” Akinbode shrugged.

“No. She doesn’t want an affair.”

“She either broke up with you or told you in some kind of women code that she wants to run off with you. If you ever build an algorithm that can translate things women say into logical assertions let me know.”

Jordan Akinbode did not think he was the best person to give advice of this nature. He had only ever been with one woman and only knew the following things about Mary Woodhull: she employed Aberdeen, had been friends with Anna back before they met, lived with Hewlett and had evidently slept with Simcoe the night before.

He had never met her.

There was, however, some hope in the way Simcoe had said her name.

“Is that what the wine in the refrigerator is about?” Akinbode asked, eager for an excuse to give the ginger the benefit of doubt.

“What wine – oh. Oh. Yes. I purchased wine for my lover and cider for Hewlett, who swears that we could have been happy together.”

“You are never going to let that go,” Hewlett hissed.

“You clearly didn’t.”  

“Simcoe – that is exactly the stuff that went missing from DeJong’s last night,” Akinbode interjected before the topic lapsed. “Make sure you take the bottles to recycling and that they don’t end up in the regular trash. I know Tallmadge’s team and I know that not everyone like to wait around for a warrant. I’m going to be in Albany for the next few weeks and I won’t have time to come back down here to deal with circumstantial evidence and _stupidity_ ,” he warned. Simcoe’s eyes widened and he gave a slight nod. Satisfied as much as he ever would be with the story behind the alcohol and Austen novel, his attention shifted. “Hewlett – what the fuck? Really, what the fuck? You tried to … _kill_ yourself? Are you fucking with me? Abigail said you – shit.”

He had said too much.

For the past several weeks, his girlfriend had been publishing a series of stories set during the American War for Independence. Largely, Akinbode supported her creative ventures. He objected, however, to her inspiration and source materials, something he felt now obliged to admit to his friends.

“She made me the villain,” Simcoe complained.

“That is understandable though.”

“How?”

Hewlett pulled down his collar to reveal light bruising on his neck. Akinbode shook his head as he answered.

“Do you remember the circumstances under which we met? I was waiting for her to get off work and you were waiting for your first therapy session to begin. I was reading a _FourFourTwo_ , we got to talking sport, and you admitted that you had been court ordered into anger management after you’d sent a senior citizen to hospital with a head injury when he fouled you during a pick up match in Central Park and the ref refused to call it. You _bragged_ about this. Abigail can hear from behind the glass you know, and first impressions tend to stick with her.”

“Yea, but if you’ll recall I told all of this to Andre and he responded, gleefully –in this exact language – _brilliant! I was thinking of putting together a soccer team. What position do you play?_ A month later, you joined said team. She surly didn’t object then. What have I done? _”_

“Oh, she did, and how.”

“He said ‘soccer’?” Hewlett clarified, thoroughly disgusted.

“It is called ‘integration.’”

“That confirms every suspicion I ever had about John Andre. _Soccer_.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way man,” Akinbode said as diplomatically as possible, “but out of everyone I know I’d say you would be the most likely to inspire terror in whomever you deemed your enemies to be.”

“Do you? _Do I?”_

 “I’ll talk to her about it. I’ve been meaning to talk to her about a lot of things,” he sighed. “Hewlett, anything to add to this laundry list?”

“No,” he replied dryly. “I’m used to having people exploit aspects of my person for entertainment value. It comes with the territory. She gave me a telescope, which I appreciate, as my apparent first impression was that of an introverted, racist, paranoid and fully incompetent leader. I felt my character needed a redeeming feature so I am happy that mine came in the form of an external object, something to otherwise expound upon my apparent conceit and sense of materialism. If I suddenly and simply fell into awkward niceties, I think the audience would be confused. No, I have no problem with Abigail’s Major. I do however have an editorial note: the town isn’t being ‘occupied’ as she insists on putting it. It is simply incorrect. Historically speaking.”

It had been a long day.

Akinbode looked at Simcoe to say something uncivil and condescending. He was disappointed. Simcoe politely peeped his thanks and returned to reading the documents before him.

It was then he knew for certain that at some point between accepting the phone call from the police station and inviting himself into the stock scheme he had made a mistake. It was clear that something was amiss. His mind kept returning to the refrigerator. He looked between Simcoe and Hewlett, questioning who was covering for whom, hoping they could sort whatever they were not telling him before Tallmadge did. If they had anything to do with Arnold’s disappearance, they were beyond any help he was willing to provide.

“How are things between you and Anna?” he asked after the documents had all been signed.

“Despite the numerous unpleasantries this evening contained she’s asked me to come back for breakfast in the morning. Simcoe, that reminds me, I am taking your pizza.”

“It is from Monday.”

“I don’t think that matters to Americans.”

“He’s right,” Akinbode conceded. “Do you have plans afterward?”

“I have to come help with coding.”

“And Anna?”

“Why?”

“I want her to stop by my office in the afternoon. Now that I know she is licenced to practice law in the State of New York. I have a case coming up as you well know and a team of paralegals who have proven all but useless when under fire. Anna needs a job – for a few weeks at least, and I need assistant council. And you owe me. Have her come in for an interview, a formality. If she wants the job, it is hers.”

“I – that is really, very generous.”

Generous might have been an overstatement. He just had a bad feeling. Anna had been a friend since collage, she was deeply entrenched in every plan Hewlett sought to hatch, and Simcoe, who had a crush on her, had lost his damn mind. He allowed that it could have been coincidence, but since spotting the cider and wine in the refrigerator he knew he had to get Anna out of Setauket, at least until the police were given a chance to do their job. He had to reduce collateral damage where he could. Anna would become just that if he did not somehow intercede.

 

* * *

 

He starred at her when the recording had finished playing. She was objectively beautiful, he admitted, if one averted their gaze before she spoke. Her features were all too striking for a single face to contain. It was more apparent in motion. They were all like that, something he attributed to the fact that Edmund Hewlett had married his second cousin.

The informant pressed her wide lips he knew to be filled with collagen together, releasing them slowly in a subtle _tick._ It was nothing. It was a close he could expect to watching her come undone.

“Give it two weeks,” he assured her. “The Major will be subject to rendition in the … American sense.”

“You mean Guantanamo?”

“What else?”

“Do they have any reason to suspect her?”

“She’s a practicing Muslim with loose ties to the case’s only suspect. All the reason in the world.”

_Tick. Tick._

He pressed on.

“The Department of Defence will get what they want, which is public support to keep the base open and less resistance against using drones within their own boarders. Great Britain, it turn, gets precedent from one of her NATO allies to do the same.”

“You are rather looking forward to Virginia, aren’t you?” she inquired without interest. It was five in the morning. They had spent the night driving from London to Edinburgh in the back of her Towne Car after he had accidently been copied on an email Alexander Hamilton of the FBI had sent to his boss containing a confession or some national importance. It had been wrong to give it a listen. If it ever came out that he had shared the information with one of his civilian informants his illustrious career would be over. She knew this.

“It is a job,” he said.

“But she is innocent.”

“And?” he nearly laughed, “Black lives may matter to some in crowded metropoles, but brown lives matter nowhere and to no one.”

“Did you eat a bad kabab recently, Ban?”

“Do you imagine I’ve ever eaten ethnic food in my life?”

“You’re repulsive.”

“Preferable to being in a constant state of denial.” 

“Me? Ah - no. Darling, I know myself to be among the worst of the worst. It is a job, as you say. Still, Major Najma Abboud is innocent and you are mistaken if you think for a moment that I will willingly turn a blind eye.” She paused only briefly, adding _again_ as if he needed a reminder.

The previous September he had seen her at the court-martial. She had been present while he was interrogating two prepubescent ‘refugees’ with a cattle prod. The first child shat out the bags of heroine he had swallowed. Then second died when one exploded inside of him. He never got to read the autopsy to discover if this had anything to do with the high-voltage charge he had been applying to the parts of the boy that determined his gender. Based on the reaction of his superiors, however, it seemed that it did.

Elinor Hewlett was the only civilian to give testimony. Her account made it seem that he had operated within the spectrum of international law, securing Britain from a threat to its people. The fact that he had taken liberties in doing so never passed her lips if it ever crossed her mind. He was let off with a warning. She had once again used her position to eliminate the competition.

Had it ended there, the matter of the missing senator would have been of no concern.

She had approached him afterwards, however, with an enticing quid pro quo. It was the first time he had smiled at her in the fifteen years that had elapsed since they had met one another at boarding school.

“Tell us another state secret then, is Senator Arnold even missing?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not. So, that is it then. The NYPD thinks my brother a killer, the feds don’t care either way, and some innocent girl will be scapegoated for a crime that may not even have been committed.”

“I thought you might have more concern for your brother’s plight,” he challenged. She did. She was trying to bide time.

“How long have we known one another exactly?” she asked rhetorically, “Long enough, surely, that you must expect me see through your bluff. No, to answer your original question; I did not know about the embezzlement. I imagine you have for a while however, or at least your bosses have, if they feel comfortable sharing this information. Are you perhaps hoping to work out a similar type of arrangement?”

“As the one my government has with you? No. We wouldn’t expect that. Not of Edmund.”

“Ungrateful,” she pressed her lips again, crossing her arms. “I supply to half of Westminster and as thanks I’m forced to further assist them whereas the rest of my siblings -”

She spoke without pause or did not speak at all. Sometimes she managed to do both all at once.

“To avoid what I am sure would be a _lengthy_ prison sentence,” he interrupted, offering a correction, “You’re contracted to kill off the competition in the name of the state, and even with all of that fun to otherwise be had, you continue with that which got you into trouble in the first place. Ungrateful.”

“The Grampian peaks are always covered in snow,” she shrugged.

“Quite.”

“So what do you want from Edmund then? Does the government have more US Senators you want to disappear?”

“What we want from Edmund we already have. I’m warning you, Love, because the problem of inheritance this imposes is of some interest to me. From my understanding, your brother remains the heir apparent.”

“And? Have you ever spoke at length to my sister? They sound the same: _father’s legacy_ and _ah!_ _our dependents_ and a _whore! A Whore! My kingdom for a whore!_ It matters not who is wearing the crown; they will both wield the sceptre in exactly the same way.”

“To wit, have you spoken to John lately?”

“Which John?”

“Graves.”

“Ah -Simcoe? From school? No, I can’t claim that I have.”

“Same whore coincidently. Anna Strong. He has been saying for years that he has been dating her.”

“I doubt it is much of a coincidence. Come. You remember surely how he lusted for all that he associated with Edmund, with power. People rarely change,” she shook her head, “and people like us never do.”

“Exactly” he grinned back, “As I’ve said, the government already has everything we could ever want from Edmund. There will still be an investigation into your family’s finances, a formality. On the political front, however, you have until Easter Sunday.”

“Easter - is that when you are planning to act?”

She had not brought up her retribution request since first speaking of it. He wondered if she assumed he had forgotten or knew that he would not.

“I will likely still be in the colonies. Worry not, the punishment will still prove torturous.”

“How?” she asked.

“I acted the moment you gave me an opportunity to repay my debt.”

“How?” she demanded. He declined. He needed her tack too much to allow that her mind be otherwise occupied with the details of avunculicide.

“Did I tell you who will be leading the investigation? Ferguson.”

At that, she threw her head back in surrender; he found it rather offensive that her rare grimace was inspired by another man’s name, but she was gorgeous in her momentary misery, and he allowed himself to appreciate it all the same.

“Ferguson. I give routinely give you everything you need to bring down elements threatening to the establishment and you give me the only incorruptible cop on the whole bloody island in return? We need to rethink our professional relationship.”

“Oh, I had nothing to do with that. Speaking of our professional relationship though, if you cannot ensure a smooth transition of power, we may need to rethink it indeed. I personally could not care less which of your siblings takes your uncle’s seat; however, being that your family’s corporate structure is intertwined with its politics, I have a few concerns. You are bound to take a hit regardless, but should Edmund inherit the crown market upset will undoubtable ensue.”

“He has abdicated.”

“We both know he hasn’t. Not officially. Make it happen or make your uncle officially declare Edna his heir. You won’t otherwise be able to keep all of your factories open and speculation indicates that the three you have in Liverpool would be the first to shut down. You can understand why I hate the idea of sudden, mass unemployment in my city, I’m sure.”

“I’ll keep the factories open. And the ports.”

“Good. I’ll get Edmund’s murder pinned on a towelhead.”

_Tick. Tick._

“With respect sir, you truly mistake me. I believe in the rule of law,” the drug lord responded.

“That is easy to say when its consequences don’t apply to you. Oh, but Darling, they soon will. Your brother needs to publically abdicate as soon as possible. Or, was that already the plan – is that why he is courting a catholic divorcee? Does he know about me? About our arrangement?”

He was met with silence.

“I don’t wish for your family to experience any more instability than they will otherwise,” he said in an attempt to sound reassuring.

“Am I to take that as a threat?”

“More as an invitation. Work around Ferguson. Or kill him. Or bring him to ruin. I don’t care. Have fun. Do whatever you have to do to silence him, and for the love of God get rid of any cash you cannot explain. Immediately,” he pinched her cheek. She spat at him and reached to pull a gun out of her Birkin. Entitled. On instinct, he blocked her hand. “Now, now,” he teased, “I can make this go away. Your brother’s corporate crimes as well.”

“The timing is horrible - but - if proven true, at most he will get six months with two years probation.”

“Not if his other crimes surface.”

Silence set in. He knew something she did not and for the first time appreciated how much fun the spies must have.

“His other crimes?” she challenged, “The disappearance of the senator you and the Americans are planning to pin to the Muslim officer who was dishonourably discharged for having a sexual relationship with a subordinate?”

“That. And.”

“And?”

“Have you checked the markets this morning? I am _certain_ Edmund has. John as well.”

“What are you talking about? Oh course John has, he is a banker.”

He declined to answer directly.

“Stabilize your family situation. You have three weeks and no support. Your uncle favours him, your parents clearly do, and with a son on the way, Gene likely does as well. Even with the recent changes to the laws, if there is a precedent of inheriting the next male heir within your family, I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t strive to set his child up for success. Your sister only has a daughter and she won’t have any more children at her age. Edmund won’t have any children at all. Think about it. I don’t want to see this play out in court or the press, and if you can’t find a way to sort things at home, there is always another option.”

“If anything happens to my brother or his friends our arrangement is off.”

“It won’t happen by my hand.”

“If it happens at all-”

“You should have bought the ponies. Or lent him sixty-thousand or whatever it was that he asked. Come darling - that would have been nothing for you to give.”

She bit her lip.  

“Mother wanted him to return. There was nothing I or anyone could have done,” she defended.

“And now it is too late. Look into his most recent stock purchases. I am all but certain that the feds will. Fergie too,” he smiled.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing that a well-placed bullet can’t conceal.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so much that I could say about this chapter, but it is my birthday, so, though I never explicitly ask for comments and kudos, I am today. Send me some love. I’m 26 and were I to die tomorrow it would no longer be considered tragic or untimely by the media.
> 
> I will say this however; last scene was disturbing for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it contained no characters from canon. This is not going to become a thing. You won’t see (any!) of them again for a while, but you would be lost in Act Two if I didn’t include this now. 
> 
> So, let’s get too it, shall we?
> 
> Translations:  
> Hewlett’s little brother orders an espresso in the beginning of the scene where he features.
> 
> Hewlett recites the rest of the poem that Simcoe (canonically!) started reciting to Akinbode, and no, that is defiantly not Scots Gaelic. 
> 
> Television:  
>  _Midsommer Murders_ and _Father Brown_ are both British crime drama of the ancient variety. In the former, the murderer isn’t always a priest but if there is a priest in the episode it is a pretty safe bet that he killed three or four people for some random reason. In the latter, it is the priest who solves murder mysteries.
> 
>  _Luther_ by contrast is dark, modern, and set in London and not in some fictional place on the English countryside. It is amazing. (Although I have love for MM too, I’ll admit. I’m old now.)
> 
> Maths:  
>  _The Gaussian distribution_ is how you figure out normality in statistics. I actually wrote this entire scene originally as a variant on this equation but could not get it to work in text form. If you are interested I can post a picture on Tumblr explaining.
> 
> Notable Persons:  
> Vladimir Putin- President of the Russian Federation
> 
> Recep Tayyip Erdoğan –President of the Republic of Turkey. Fun fact! For the line of fanfiction that featured his name is a critical context, I could be sentenced to two years imprisonment as per Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. _Rise up!_
> 
> Elizabeth Gwillim - historical Simcoe’s wife.
> 
> Ban Tarleton – another British officer during the American War for Independence. After the conflict which earned him the nicknames _the Butcher_ and _Bloody Ban,_ he returned to Liverpool where as an MP he was active in making sure the slave trade flourished. 
> 
> (Richard) Ferguson – yet another British officer during the American War for Independence. Fun fact! Alex Rose stated the character of Edmund Hewlett was loosely based on this guy, so (no spoilers!) but that will be a fun dynamic to play with at some later stage.
> 
> None of the Hewletts ever existed, of course.
> 
> Name Based Puns:  
> I can’t take any credit this time, lovely faces. _Akinbuddy_ was used with the permission of John-Graves-Simcoe on Tumblr (who is amazing, you should follow her if you are not already.)
> 
>  _Klopptimist_ is the combination of LFC’s trainer Jürgen Klopp and optimist. It is brilliant and so fitting for that whole fan base. I could go full meta on why Hew would be a Red in any modern AU, but I will spare you.
> 
> Football:  
> Is called _soccer_ in the US. If you know nothing else about the beautiful game, I am certain you know that.
> 
>  _Leicester City FC_ won the league in the 2015/16 season. If you know nothing else about the beautiful game, I am certain you know that.
> 
>  _FourFourTwo_ is an English footy magazine.
> 
> Did I miss anything or anyone? Do be so kind as to let me know.
> 
> Otherwise, thank you so much for reading! I can’t believe this thing has nearly 1,000 hits! That is insane! Really, I am so grateful to you all.
> 
> We finally did it! We are finally 24 hours past Arnold’s disappearance (the day we have been on since 1. May OMFG) there is one more chapter before the curtain closes on this act. I will try to get it up by the end of the year but the way things have been going I can’t promise anything. If we don’t see each other before the year turns, happy holidays and take care!
> 
> XOXO - Tav
> 
> Up Next: Baker gets fouled, Simcoe and Mary get it on (Really? Really!), Akinbode gets the f(x)ck out of town, Rogers gets revenge, Andre gets his due


	19. The Internal Conflict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben Tallmadge investigates and (over)analyses, loses a friend and finds himself a lover. Peggy Shippen polishes her lies with political spin. In the spring of 2002 Simcoe filed and promptly retracted a claim against Hewlett, the implications of which may be of some interest to the investigation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, lovely faces! I hope yours has gotten off to a great start. I am sorry it has taken me so long to update, and I am sorry to come back with everyone’s least favourite part of this particular crime saga, namely, the policing. I had wanted (and have written) a longer chapter, pulling together all of the individual elements I’ve introduced thus far, and in a lot of ways that goal has been achieved (yay!) – As with nearly everything else I touch, however, I may have overdone it, and in the latest of countless edits, I’ve decided that forty pages of Hide and Seek is, to borrow form Miranda’s Hamilton, _“too many damn pages for any man to understand.”_
> 
> So, with that in mind, I cut it off about a third of the way in. Not entirely happy with how this works on its own, but somewhat satisfied with the idea that I am not about to completely overwhelm the reader. Fingers crossed that you will not be too bored or disappointed to see how the rest of this plays out (hopefully sometime next week!)
> 
> I don’t have any trigger warnings before we start but I do have to say thanks to each of you for giving this fic **over 1,000 hits!** So – Danke sehr! Ich hab euch lieb! Shall we, then?

He bent over, his lips locked with another man’s as he struggled to unlock the door to his flat. On his third attempt to blindly locate the key hole, he surrendered. Caleb Brewster pushed him up against the door, brushing Ben’s nose with the brim of his hat as he gently took the keys with his calloused hands. _‘Leave it on,’_ Ben told him in a euphoric gasp when his guest made a move to remove it. The door gave way and Ben stepped backwards into the small apartment on the fourteenth floor, his back still against the barrier, his tongue still entwined with that of a man whose name was on his list of possible witnesses. He hated that even with the promise of intercourse; the investigation was still at the forefront of his mind.

When Caleb bent down to pet his dog –who, much like the Chief Inspector himself had taken an instant liking to their houseguest – Ben shut the door an turn on the lights. He instantly regretted this decision and attempted to apologise for the state of disarray. Case files and cartons from the Chinese place down the street littered the room. His dog had made good use of the newspaper that he had laid out. Allowed to bake in the artificial warmth of heater he had forgotten to switch off, the scent of shit and piss was choking. Opening a window, Ben explained that he had not been home very much that week – stopping mid-sentence, not because of Caleb’s unconvincing attempts to reassure him that his place often looked worse, but because once again he found himself ruining his personal life with talk of his professional one. Caleb either had not noticed or had not yet learned to meet Ben’s frustration with anger, as everyone else had seemed to as of late. He wondered if his date would stick around to the point of resentment.

It was doubtful.

If Benjamin Tallmadge’s world had ever extended beyond his work load enough for him to have developed a type, he was certain that Brewster would not fit the bill. He drove a postal truck, lived in an old houseboat out in Oyster Bay, grew marijuana in his uncle’s basement and played in a garage band that occasionally held practice sessions directly underneath the bedchamber of one of Ben’s primary suspects. Caleb himself had an arrest record. He had a two-year degree from a community college. He had a smile bright enough to cause the sun envy. He had charisma. He had his fun.

He’d have Ben, too -as he likely had someone after every show- and leave it there. No breakfast, no number, no _‘we should do this again sometime.’_

Ben considered himself far too boring to imagine he would be heartbroken over the brevity of the affair.

He watched the only man he had ever seen make a cowboy hat look downright sexy as Caleb’s eyes flashed around the rubble of his life, over notes and evidence from the cases he had been recently thrown off thanks to the city’s priority of finding the senator from another state. Cases Ben continued to work in secret. Cases that, if taken individually, might have left him without the knowledge that Caleb had an unpaid speeding ticket from the twelfth of February. He found himself wishing that he did not know all that he did about the man before him, that all of Brewster’s secrets could have been allowed reveal themselves organically as opposed to as a matter of procedure. But they wouldn’t, would they? Ben thought. There would not be adequate time. Caleb would move on by morning, if not before. By the next time Culper Ring preformed, he would have forgotten Ben, his apartment, the piles of books and bile and rubbish, the excited dachshund who was responsible for at least some of the chaos in which they found themselves entrenched.

Upon consideration, perhaps Caleb Brewster was exactly what Benjamin Tallmadge had long been looking for in someone else.

“Is that John Andre?” he asked, squinting at a picture Ben had tacked up on his wall which itself was a mess of notes and scribbles.

Then again, Ben thought as the part-time rock star continued to inquire about the lines he had thus far failed to fully connect; perhaps it was a mistake to bring his work home with him in either sense.

“This is wrong,” he stated.

“You sayin’ that as a virgin, as the son of a preacher, or as a copper, huh Benny-boy?”

“As a, as a cop – I’m not -” he stopped. Blinked. No one in New York assumed he was a virgin after the scandal that ruined his name four years prior.

“You think too much,” Caleb laughed, taking off his long leather trench and resting it over the back of the couch before approaching, slowly unzipping Ben’s slightly too-sung jacket as he continued, “I know who yer dad is ‘cause Jordan’s mentioned it a time or ten. Told us all you went to Yale, too. Don’t look so surprised there, Benny – nothing is really a secret in a place like Setauket.”

“That has not been my experience,” Ben scoffed. His tone made him sound so formal, so distant, that he regretted having spoken at all.

“You should come ‘round more often then,” Caleb teased as he felt Ben’s cock stiffen underneath his kakis, bringing a grin to Caleb’s round, bearded face. “Spend a night on my boat. Stay the weekend, whatever.”

Stay, Ben heard. Stay. He almost protested that he could not swim. He felt he was drowning even now, tasting the beer on Caleb’s breath as it mixed with his own.

“I’m not -” he started.

“Ready?” Caleb asked, stepping back.

“A virgin,” Ben said, leaning over to kiss him once more.

“Aye, but you’ve not had me yet, now have you?” he winked. “Trust me; you’ve never really had a proper fuck. I’ll have you convinced of that before the night is over.”

 

* * *

 

Several hours earlier, going out had felt like a mistake. In his tight, beige-coloured trousers and bright blue cashmere sweater – just loose enough to disguise the baby fat he had never quite shed, just the right shade to make his eyes shine – Ben had both looked and felt out of place at the underground venue. In the dim, barely ventilated room filled with smoke and sweat there was an excited energy that he could feel but could not take part of - not with everyone’s eyes on him. Not when he recognised so many of the faces he saw in the crowd, most of them from pervious police line-ups.

He looked down at his shoulders, conscious that although he was not in uniform, he might as well have been. DCI Tallmadge was as overdressed and out of place in the club as he was anywhere else. He found himself longing for the semblance of youth he might have enjoyed the weekend before if he had bothered to make plans; alas, his thirtieth had passed without fanfare, a watermark on his awareness that had failed to be marked on anyone’s social calendar. In the confusion of studded leather, steal toed boots and candy-coloured undercuts, Ben felt aged and alienated by an outfit he realized spoke of brunch and boredom. He felt alone. He muttered an apology - half to himself - as a heavily tattooed young woman shoved past, cursing him for her spilt beverage. 

Even in the advent of the opening act’s newfound notoriety, there were far more people than Ben had anticipated at the show.

Culper Ring had received a fair amount of attention due to Fox News’s misinterpretation of the intent behind several of their recent Tweets - items such as >> _If Obama authorised the use of drones on US soil it would be no problem to #FindArnold._ << The internet erupted in mockery of Bill O'Reilly’s failure to see the irony in the misused hashtag Ben’s unit had coined – having cited it as public support for the bill the senator was championing before going on a seven-minute rant about the holes in national security. The band’s Twitter account quadrupled its following as a result, the count continuing to increase with every pert political post. Culper Ring thus earned themselves a number of local radio interviews in the past week – serving to further the frustration of the NYPD, who thus far he had been unsuccessful in their attempts to contact either Robert Townsend or Abraham Woodhull for questioning.

The space grew denser, the inspector tenser, his mind again escaping to the dry erase bored in his office when the Woodhull’s au pair elbowed her way past him to position herself closer to the stage. He scanned the room for the girl’s employer. When his eyes coming up empty, he placed the singer’s wife with the man who had become the target of his inquiry. He knew his gut assumption as to Mrs. Woodhull’s whereabouts were of her own design; though try as he might, he could not rationalize why the young woman had actively endeavoured to give him this impression.

Mary Woodhull seemed to otherwise crave a semblance of stability; something the FBI’s contracted interrogator had attributed in passing to each generation being a rebellion against the one proceeding it. According to Constable Baker’s extensive -though largely unhelpful - report, the suspect had spent years in and out of the foster care system as a girl. As a woman, Mary fit a familiar profile; holding on to a dangerous, damning belief in the fantastic lies she sold the world and told herself.  

A deviance with John Graves Simcoe did not conform to the domestic narrative she had written. Where one created conformity, the other thrived in chaos.

Ben had doubted the two were having an affair - physical, emotional or otherwise – from the moment he had initially encountered the claim during Simcoe’s first visit to 1PP. Days later, when individually pressed for detail concerning their activities on the night of Senator Arnold’s disappearance, the pair had been oddly explicit in their recollections. The descriptions they provided were identical, but beyond the verifiable fact that they had driven Anna Strong’s Escort to a motel in Connecticut, everything the inspector rather wished he had not heard appeared to be fiction.

 _“Fifty Shades of Graves,”_ PC Sanchez had remarked as she looked over the sworn statements.

 _“It was rather explicit,”_ Ben agreed.

_“No, Boss, I mean – this is literally a scene from a book. Almost word for word if I recall correctly. I can lend you a copy if you want it for reference.”_

_“Actually,”_ he replied, _“if you are up for genre reading, there is something a friend of mine told me about last night that I’d appreciate you taking a look at. It is a historical romance.”_

Friend.

Ben felt a pang of guilt. He felt more alone in the crowded club than he had before the memory the term evoked had resurfaced. Friend was a stretch and he was at fault. He pulled out his phone and wondered if he would be pushing it if he rang again, having already done so twice since Jordan had stormed out on him the night before. Not that Ben could blame him - he had, after all, blatantly attempted to manipulate the man’s misery to gain some insight into an investigation he hoped to put to rest as quickly as possible.

Lately it seemed that all of his social calls rang of casework.

Lifting his mobile out of his back pocket, Ben saw that he had missed three calls, a text massage and a number of email since last he had last frantically checked the device.

Nothing from Jordan Akinbode.

Not that Ben could blame him.

He remembered refreshing his screen in increasing intervals outside of the club as he moved up in queue. While waiting in line, he had told himself that it was a matter of prudence; he did not know if he would have reception in the cellar of an old meatpacking plant serving as the night’s venue. In truth, he now acknowledged, he had been looking for an excuse not to go inside.

He now had a decent one to leave.

Two of the calls and the sole text came from DS Yilmaz; the other call from a UK number he assumed from the context of what his sergeant had written must have been his counterpart at Scotland Yard.

>> _WE’VE FERG’S FILES!!! Call me, please -!_ <<

Ben expected his excitable subordinate wanted to apologise for the accusations she had made against him Friday morning. She could do so face to face on Monday after sweating it out over the weekend, he reasoned. He opened his email after sending a simple reply of >> _Thanks._ <<, finding that the cold case he had requested access to had indeed found its way into his inbox. If it contained the full medical jurisprudence, the two sworn statements in which he was interested and the interviews that proceeded them, he suspected he would have enough to convince his bosses to let his unit do a sweep of Dr Dandridge’s office. >> _Good work._ << he typed to the detective sergeant he had tasked with the acquisition, deleting the message before hitting send.

He felt himself smiling.

Ben briefly allowed himself to question if his elation came from having gotten his hands on a decade-old document in which Hewlett and Simcoe both featured – or - for having an excuse to leave before the music started. He looked up at the stage and saw the man he deduced was Caleb Brewster. He was captivated instantly at the sight of the drummer as he had been at the sound of his voice. Captivated, that was, until his phone buzzed seconds later with a series of emoji that lead him to conclude that Yilmaz and the rest of his task force were still at their desks. The text reminded him that on this night, as on every other, there were matters far more pressing that his own loneliness for him to contend with.

 

* * *

 

Making his way towards the restrooms where he hoped to find some quiet with which to make a call to Richard Ferguson thanking him for his cooperation, the inspector saw a second pretty face that caused him a decent measure of disorientation. She was as overdressed for the event as he was - her colour palette far too pale to pass for punk. Then, Ben supposed, the girl was used to standing out. Unlike him, she likely revelled in it.

“Miss Shippen,” he remarked, more statement than greeting.

“Inspector Tallmadge,” she replied with forced mirth.

“I was not aware that you were still in the city.”

“I,” she started, her forced composure fading as she spoke, “with everything they are saying on Fox about poor Benedict Arnold tweeting me before, well before …,” Peggy trailed off. Ben followed her thoughts to the assumptions they shared with much of the public. “I did not think it was appropriate to return to Penn just yet. I’m certain you and the rest of New York’s finest will find the dear man soon … working around the clock as you are.”

She met his suspicious, inquiring stare with one of her own.

Ben narrowed his gaze. 

“As the girl the news is claiming Senator Arnold expected to meet, perhaps more importantly as a citizen of the Keystone State which he represents with so much valour, I feel it is my duty to stay in New York for at least a few days more. I should like to be here for him when he is brought to safety should he require my comfort whilst recovering from his ordeal.”

“To clarify, Miss Shippen,” he stated, removing the stylus from his phone case for show, “you are waiting for Arnold at a concert put on by a local band profiting from their derision of my investigation?”

“To clarify, Inspector, you are looking for him here?” she seemed to laugh without smiling.

Ben glanced down at his phone, at the number he had intended to ring and the email he had intended to read whilst hiding in a bathroom stall from a world he no longer felt he could take part of.

“I came in hopes of speaking with a certain suspect,” he lied.

Peggy’s eyes widened slightly. “Well then, I suppose I should leave you to it.”

He met her attempt to exit with a challenge. “Four days ago you voluntarily came into the precinct, providing us with a statement swearing that you had no connection to Senator Arnold.”

“I mentioned that we had once met at one of my father’s fundraisers when I was but a girl,” she flippantly replied.

“By chance, Miss Shippen, do you happen to recollect if Abigail Ingram was with you at this event? From my understanding she was living with your family at the time, is that correct?”

“Abigail?” Peggy took a step back.

“Are you staying with her whilst waiting for updates on Benedict Arnold? I know you checked out of your hotel on Wednesday.”

“I … yes of course I am,” she said after a moment of consideration. 

“How is she?”  Ben asked quickly but with concern. He wondered if he wished the answer to indicate the extent to which Peggy Shippen was lying or to help him to patch things up with a childhood friend of his own.

“Fine. She is great.” 

“Is she? Even given the break-up?”

“Break-up?” she gasped.

“Jordan is distraught,” Ben remarked. He felt his heart sink, weighed down by his behaviour the night before – behaviour he recognized he was again engaging in.

“I didn’t, my God. I assumed -” she stammered.

“Miss Shippen, I would like to ask you a few more questions at the station at your earliest possible convenience.”

“Sir I, sorry, I just thought she was upset because her boss -”

“Is missing?”

“From my understanding he went to rehab.”

“He didn’t. My unit has been trying to contact him. We obtained a subpoena for every in-patient treatment facility in the nation and none of them report John Andre as a current patient. His wife-”

“His … what?” she inquired slowly.

“Philomena Cheer,” Ben paused, noting for the first time the light resemblance between the diva and the youngest daughter of a political dynasty. “Philomena Cheer informed one of my officers she has not seen or heard from her husband since Tuesday afternoon, meaning that the suspect has officially been missing since around the same time as-”

“You don’t think John Andre has anything to do with Arnold, do you? Oh, you can’t think that! He is a gentleman and a fine doctor, surely -”

Interesting, Ben observed. “I was not aware that the two of your knew each other.”

“We don’t. I barely know him at all from outside of Abby’s workplace stories. We met once, a few days ago, helping Anna Strong more the rest of her stuff out of her ex’s apartment.”

“Tuesday morning?”

“Afternoon. He rode with John Simcoe who could not find street parking.”

Interesting.

“He seems to have left quite an impression.”

“Oh, no, not really. What in heaven’s name makes you say that?” she twisted the end of one of her bouncing blonde curls around her index finger. Ben wondered if she knew how nervous she looked. He pressed.

“We need to speak to him. At the very least, we need to locate him or copies of certain files we believe absent from his office records. Records which, and perhaps you can correct me on this, Abigail would have access to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I should like to speak to her as well.”

Peggy crossed her arms. “Mr. Tallmadge, with all due respect, I am willing to do anything I possibly can to see that the perpetrator of this grievous offence against Senator Arnold is dealt with under the full extent of the law, but Abigail and John -” The speakers drowned her out as the amplifier connected with a buzz.

“I don’t believe this to be an appropriate venue for a conversation it seems that you and I need to have,” Ben shouted, putting a finger to one of his ears.

“I have nothing to say,” Peggy claimed when the ringing had stopped.

“Perhaps you will. I want you to try to remember if Abigail was ever at an event with your family where she would have had the opportunity to meet with the Senator, and - Miss Shippen, as long as you are in town for this very purpose, perhaps there is something you can do to assist-”

“Certainly,” she interrupted. “It would be my honour and my duty as a patriot, Inspector.”

Ben was weary of the political spin constantly present in her voice. Still, he thought, he might be able to use it to his advantage.

“Would you be willing to speak at a press conference, to make an appeal on Arnold’s behalf?”

“I’ll have my assistant phone your office first thing on Monday morning to set something up.”

“You can stop by the precinct yourself tomorrow afternoon.”

“Tomorrow?” she blinked.

“Two o’clock, should we say? Bring Abigail.”

“I don’t know if she,” Peggy paused, “given the break-up -”

“If it is a problem for either of you to get to 1PP I would be happy to arrange an escort.”

Peggy shook her head. “I’ll consider it a date. If you’ll excuse me for now,” she said as the lights dimmed and the frontman greeted the audience with the name of their city.

“Of course,” Ben nodded.

 

* * *

 

He followed her at a distance after she left, in part as a covert measure, in part due to the restriction of the terrain. When his eyes found her through the crowd, he saw that she had joined a man at the bar – the same man who, incidentally, had effectively gone missing on the same day as Senator Arnold. Ben nodded. It was beginning to make sense. He used the camera on his mobile to snap a number of photographs of the couple when it became clear to him that forcing his way through the masses waiting on the attention of the two over-worked alewives was futile – even when he showed his badge.

John Andre finished his long drink in a single gulp, perfectly composed. He rose and, putting an arm around the shoulders of Miss Shippen, escorted her in the direction of the door. By the time Ben had broken through the crowd, the two had disappeared. He saw that the napkin under Andre’s emptied glass contained both a pen sketch of Peggy and the doctor’s messy signature. Ben shoved the drawing in his back pocket, wondering if he could expect the same reaction from ADA Burr, to whom the Arnold Case had be reallocated, as he would have otherwise gotten from DA Smith about of the use unauthorised surveillance – a category which his photo series also belonged. He informed one of the bartenders that he needed to take the glass as possible DNA evidence, showing both his badge and his police ID. She in turn informed him that he would need to pay five dollars for it.

When Inspector Tallmadge forced his way outside minutes later, Shippen and Andre were nowhere to be found. He rang his precinct to explain that he needed eyes on the daughter of the former Pennsylvania Governor and a squad car stationed outside of the Ingram residence. Dispatch warned him that he had better know what he was doing.

He did not.

He walked to the car he had parked in front of the building, took two evidence bags out of the glove box and individually labelled the glass and the napkin he had discovered underneath it. Afterwards, he attempted to return to the concert Caleb Brewster had invited him to, but the line had doubled since he had exited venue minutes before and his badge was no more help with the bouncer than it was against the concertgoers presumably trying to down out Robert Townsend’s riffs with drink. Defeated, he returned to his vehicle, sat in the passenger’s seat and took his notebook from the coat laying in the back after calling his counterpart in Edinburg as a matter of curtesy.

It was too late in every sense to call Jordan Akinbode in an attempt to make amends.

 

* * *

 

By the time Ben had made it into work at seven o’clock on Thursday morning, half of his unit had already heard the twenty-two-minute recording of Edmund Hewlett’s most recent telephone conversation.  The suspect’s elder sister contradicted many of the assertions he had made about the circumstances under which he had left Scotland, sounding simultaneously injured and apologetic in her chastisement. Hewlett, predictably, made no effort to defend himself during the long-winded rebuttal to his claims, offering atonement in place of attack. It seemed to the inspector that his suspect often presented this sort of concession to his opponents. He viewed the tendency to retreat as tactic; Hewlett fell back in order to lure his enemies into an ambush. Ben assumed, based on the frequency of which he had encountered it in the twenty hours that had passed since first they had met, that this particular strategy must have served the suspect well in days prior.

Not this time, Ben said to himself as he starred down the two exhausted law-enforcement officers whose misfortune it had been to be standing with him in Mr Sackett’s small office. Neither Russo nor Sanchez attempted to offer an explanation or excuse for how the confession they had obtained the night before found its way into the public sphere. Ben clenched his jaw as he watched his subordinates exchange nervous glances, knowing that he himself would ultimately be held accountable for this misstep; wondering where the leak had originated and whom it might serve.

He already had an inkling.

Edmund Hewlett was far more cunning and capable than he let on. The night before in the quite of his flat, Ben had spent the two hours elapsing between restlessness and insomnia examining the transcripts and video footage from the initial interviews he had taken following the disappearance. Though it was a common move for solicitors to cite evidence as circumstantial, in this particular incidence Jordan Akinbode made a fair case – his client seemed guilty of nothing beyond bad timing.

Either bad, Ben had amended, scrawling notes in his moleskin, or extremely precise.

No, he decided, Hewlett’s conduct was not without design. That, however, did not directly suggest guilt. Having compared the Scot’s statement to the other he had obtained, Ben determined that in order to discover to what ends Hewlett sought to sacrifice himself, he had to continue to play into the foreigner’s attempted ruse. It further served his objective to follow the narrative he had been handed, for doing so invited a primary witness to operate under the comfortable illusion that he himself was not being considered as a probable suspect. Straining over the edge of sanity in hopes of glimpsing his rival’s fall, the inspector reasoned, John Graves Simcoe was bound to slip.

It was difficult to determine if Hewlett intend to help or harm his friend cum adversary with the actions he assumed, or if the man even warranted an afterthought from the heir presumptive. The relationship between the two was one that both defined as having aspects of begrudging admiration and bitter antagonism, or, as they were likely to put it in the Queen’s English, _‘Lads are bound to have a set-to now and again, yea?’_   Ben himself was curious to discover just how far he would need to aggravate this enmity before obtaining answers directly relevant to Benedict Arnold. The way Simcoe fidgeted on tape at the mention of his foe lead him to believe the battle would be short.

Or could have been.

The playback finished with the usurper advising the suspect that his admission had forced her to cede their brother to the tabloids, warning Edmund to tread with more caution while doing business in New York. She hung up - or the recording finished - before he had time to respond.

Ben bit his lower lip, nodding slowly as his thoughts gathered into a storm.

“Do we know what she meant? If anything pertaining to this inquiry has found its way to the press -”

“Daily Mail published the photograph Hewlett sent its editor yesterday morning as we expected they would, Sir. Noting has been written about the direction of our search. What Douglas-Chaplin referred to seems to be post-factual and unrelated to the case or to any of the confessions we obtained.”

Russo pulled up and article from BuzzFeed insinuating that Eugene Hewlett had left his very pregnant wife after discovering that he was not the biological father of the child she carried. Ben breathed a sigh of relief. The Hewletts were less threatened by scandal than they were by speculation. He had received a call at four in the morning informing him that youngest sibling had been detained in Copenhagen by the FBI for his involvement in a suspected money-laundering scheme concerning property in New York. Ben read the short article several times, dismissing it as a classic distraction tactic. He returned to the question of what Hewlett meant to hide behind the admission that had given the FBI reasonable grounds to examine his family’s business dealings within US boarders.

“Can anyone offer an explanation?” he asked.

“Last night after you told us to pursue Hewlett after he left the Smith residence, he pulled into a 7-11 to purchase coffee and cigarettes. While we were waiting for him in the van, we heard over dispatch that a 966 was reported at that location, at which point Yilmaz, Sanchez and I stepped in and arrested the clerk. Hewlett left the premises before an officer from the eighty-eighth arrived to bring him in. Maybe while the three of us were in the store he -”

“I was in the surveillance vehicle the entire time,” Mr Sackett interjected. “After exiting, Hewlett presumably drove directly to Simcoe’s. When we arrived at the address less than fifteen minutes later he had only just parked his car. It is extremely unlikely that he had anything to do with Edna Douglas-Chaplin obtaining our audio. I sent it to both you and Hamilton as per your instruction. No one else had access to it, and I would know if our servers had been compromised. The leak did not come from the NYPD.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Ben gave his mentor a weak smile before hazarding to inquire, “Where is Yilmaz right now?”

Sackett shook his head.

“I think she is on the phone with Interpol,” Sanchez offered.

“The feds said they gave the case to a finance guy. The limeys, I mean,” Russo clarified. “Yilmaz found a restricted cold case from back in 2008 in the database that the same fucker couldn’t crack way back when. Anyway, name rang a bell for her. She is using that to try to gain access to the file as it was the only thing that came up when we searched Edmund Hewlett’s name. I don’t know if this is significant, but Simcoe was also a suspect in this case.”

“You might have checked with me first. I’m not okay with this. In the future, communication with our international allies and with the FBI needs to be coordinated through me,” he said.

Everyone spoke. He could not focus and then he could not hear.

The night before he had re-examined the footage on Simcoe’s attempt of providing character witness. He had not noticed at the time - perhaps because of the blood on Simcoe’s ear or the marks on his neck, perhaps because his fingertips never stopped moving - but his knuckles had been raw. Ben saw in the follow up interview that Martha Dandridge made no note of this either, or if she did, she had not questioned the blood on his hands, conceivably  because she expected Simcoe to lie about its origin as she insisted he had about  the bites and bruises having come from a lover. Ben noticed that -as Sanchez had mentioned after the interrogation- the only time that Dandridge had actively taken notes was when Simcoe spoke about his association soccer team. Was this a ploy, or had she, and by extension Washington, ulterior motives for conducting the interview?

Ben nodded, turned, and re-entered the bullpen. It was as loud as Sackett’s office had been. It was a hum, a hymn, a symphony. It sang. It spoke. It told Ben as he glanced from desk to desk, at all of his potential enemies within, to keep his suspicions to himself before making his next move.

 

* * *

 

At nine o’clock Ben heard back from pathology that the blood discovered last night in the vicinity of DeJong’s Tavern belonged to Benedict Arnold as he had both hoped and feared. After additionally being advised that the trail the victim left implied severe injury to his left leg, after briefing his entire unit of the possibility of a second vehicle being involved in the crash and being used to transport Arnold from the crime scene, after giving them their individual agendas, he sat down to make the telephone call he was dreading. Thanks to the unidentified hole in security, he had lost the upper hand in negotiations with Scotland Yard. He hated that his first contact would be in the form of apology. Ben looked the number his sergeant provided while explaining that her earlier conversation with Richard Ferguson had been civil and thus had done nothing to aid their search. He was too tired to reprimand, instead dismissing her with a slight wave as he dialled.

His counterpart answered after the first ring.

“You’ll have to excuse the background noise, Inspector Tallmadge,” Ferguson said after they had both made their formal introductions. “It is an absolute mad house in here today and if I were to step outside the possibility exists that these – pardon my tongue - bloody tourists could well overhear. My government has thus far failed to comply with what I imagine ought to have been a basic request to close the palace to visitors whilst we are investigating its upstairs offices. Do you ever feel as though you’ve been set up for failure?” It was rhetorical, but relatable. Ben took a deep breath.

“That is actually part of the reason I am calling. The audio file my colleague at the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent that tipped off your search – I have good reason to believe that there has been a compromise in security somewhere in the chain. Edna Douglas-Chaplin made contact with Edmund Hewlett this morning with regard to the claims he made about how his siblings view him, quoting-”

“No, no. You needn’t worry yourself over that slip up,” his colleague broke in. “Tis I who ought to be apologising on behalf of my government. No mistakes were made on your end, Tallmadge. Put your worries to rest. I know who is responsible, or at the very least, I have strong suspicions.”

“Oh?” Ben hoped he would elaborate. He was to be disappointed.

“Let’s leave it at there are certain perks enjoyed by those deemed necessary evils by the forces that be. I’ll include in that the problems I have been told your team is encountering with regard to diplomatic immunity.”

“Is that why your embassy has not been forthcoming with Hewlett’s criminal record?”

There was a cut in the line. Ben listened to static for a moment, wondering all the while if he ought to hang up. When Ferguson’s voice returned, it sounded less mechanical. Ben assumed he had been on speaker.

“That and the reality that he has no priors,” he paused. “None that I can speak of. Tallmadge, I’ve been thinking on it - there may be something I can forward along. I came across, years ago rather, I – I only mention it because, well; this might be off base – or, perhaps you can verify, does the name John Graves Simcoe say anything to you?”

Everything, Ben wanted to say; instead, he replied with caution, “Simcoe came in yesterday to provide character witness after Hewlett was arrested in suspicion of Arnold’s disappearance.”

Ben could hear his colleague chewing on the end of a pen in the pause that followed.

“Curious,” Ferguson coughed after presumably devouring the writing instrument.

“Why is that?”

“I am simply surprised, and then, not surprised in the least. Several years back, it must be over a decade now, I was briefly assigned to an investigation of an attempted homicide when the brother of one of the suspects I was looking into on unrelated charges was found – bloodied, beaten near to his death. Simcoe and Hewlett, um, specifically your Edmund Hewlett, were the ones who rang the local police force upon discovering the victim. Your sergeant might have mentioned this already, we spoke on the matter about an hour ago.”

“We are not able to access the case files and Interpol has been uncooperative.”

“Unfortunately I don’t believe I can be of much assistance there, either. The case I was assigned to is of particular value to the French military; as soon as I uncovered that connection, grounds were invented for my dismissal. It was redlined several weeks later. I am not at liberty to say more. I can however-”

“Were they treated as suspects? Hewlett and Simcoe?” Ben interrupted. He knew the vexation he could here in the Scot’s voice first-hand. He hoped he could get the man to vent.

“Briefly,” Ferguson admitted. “In the early stages of my inquiry I came across – something I can send to you, actually. A retracted claim that may well be of interest if you are being made to deal with their …. particular -”

“Bullshit?”

Ferguson gave something between a snort and a laugh. Ben was not sure if it was nervous, forced, or if his international ally was simply unused to chortle. “That is um, not quite how I would phrase it, but yes. Yes, something like that.”

Ben provided his email address. Ferguson continued, “Around six years prior to my coming into contact with him, a twelve-year old was found alone at Heathrow trying to purchase a one-way ticket to Pakistan. Naturally, Scotland Yard was notified for reasons obvious. The Counter Terrorism Unit dismissed the inquiry after several hours of interrogation – the records of which never existed, you’ll understand. When they were through, they brought the boy to local to make a statement with regard to how he wound up alone at an airport in London when he was meant to be attending school in York. Young John Graves originally claimed that he had been brought to a refugee safe house in Glasgow as a translator, sold out by a classmate when the location was fired upon and ultimately taken hostage for several weeks by a man who had been arrested for involvement in organized crime days before. The whole of it – gang warfare, the arrest - it had been all over the all over the papers, perhaps fuelling the lad’s imagination as the constable who conducted the London interview noted – um, wait, I found it and I am sending it now, we’re on page four I believe. That is – I was just looking at this last night, I have – well, no matter.” He took a moment to collect himself. “Personally, I consider Simcoe’s now-retracted claim far too detailed to be entirely fantastic, but by the time it made its way to my desk there was nothing to be done.”

“I am guessing the classmate was Hewlett, the one he said sold him out?” Ben refreshed his screen. Nothing.

“Quite right. Hewlett was naturally interviewed in follow up. Page seven.” Ben refreshed again, nearly smiled, opened his email and waited for the PDF to download. “He stated that he had shared a carriage on the train with Simcoe when leaving for the spring holidays but had not seen him since. Hewlett claimed –rather convincingly I’d imagine - that he had been worried, as had been the whole student body, when the boy did not return after Easter, though, I’ll note for you, as it was not recorded in the investigation, faculty never made a move to report the child as a missing person.”

“That sounds rather sinister. No charges were brought against the school?”

“Hewlett went on to suggest that the boy was disturbed and perhaps boarding school was not the best place for him after all. That might also be worthy of note. He never referred to Simcoe by name – even years later when I’d the opportunity to question him. Ah, but returning to Duke of York - Simcoe’s legal guardian then made him drop the claim when the school took the suggestion of expulsion seriously. He was made to repeat the year. According to school records which I gained access to in the scope of my later investigation, Simcoe was in fact made the repeat year six twice, the first for what his record cites as behavioural issues – making false allegations against a fellow student. The second time for linguistic problems; evidently, he once again fell into a silent spell, failing to articulate himself after his cries for help were ignored. He had, and may still have if I recall correctly, a speech development problem as it were, given past issues with post-traumatic stress -”

“I am aware of what happened to his parents.”

“Yes well, there you have it. I suppose I’d ought to let you carry on then.”

“No, no, I – I’m curious, how exactly did all of this play out in your later inquiry?”

“I questioned them both about the prior incident; they both flatly denied any recollection of it having happened.”

It struck Ben in particular that Hewlett sounded unapologetic in Ferguson’s version of events. He wondered if the inspector’s memory was clouded by prejudice – something he would later learn was most defiantly the case and most defiantly deserved.

“And this second case, the one that you worked -”

“I fear I am not at liberty to discuss it. I will disclose only my personal observation that there was something decidedly wrong with the way the two interacted with one another, and that it surprises me that they have remained in contact, while, at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I apologise that I can’t be of more assistance.”

Ben exhaled slowly.

“Are you familiar with Dr Martha Dandridge?”

“I’ve read her books, yes.”

“She spoke to Simcoe yesterday, suggesting an element of corrosive control being employed.”

“On whose behalf?”

“Hewlett to Simcoe.”

Ben could hear the chewing again, the grating sound of bone against plastic. He remembered a lecture Jordan’s father had given him when he was eight and lost a loose tooth to a Bic, recalling at the same time that he had plans the following evening he hoped the investigation’s focus on his friend’s teammates would not interrupt. He closed his eyes, thankful for the reprieve from an accent charming only in film, imagining his two similar sounding suspects sitting down to enjoy tea and ballpoints as opposed to biscuits whilst Ferguson continued to chew over his response.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to disagree with that assessment, though I didn’t read psychology at university and it is not mine to judge.”

“No, no, judge away,” Ben said. He sent a text to PC Braxton asking if Dandridge had agreed to sit down with Simcoe once more that he might lie about his ear, his knuckles and perhaps his relationships with Mary Woodhull and Edmund Hewlett. He received a number of photographs in return. Ben ignored them as they loaded and he listened, taking the handset back from his shoulder blade and readjusting himself to a more comfortable posture.

“From what I know of John Graves Simcoe he doesn’t do anything that falls out of line with his immediate interests – and certainly not at Edmund Hewlett’s bidding or suggestion. I always – you’ll have to take this with some degree of speculation, I always thought him, rather -”

“Guilty?”

“Capable. You’ll – I really ought not -”

“Please. We have very little to go on. It is imperative that I understand - as broadly as possible - the connection between my suspects. I have nothing to connect Arnold to anyone in this city at all - beyond a few tweets to Republican hopeful Donald Trump and a few to a young woman named Peggy Shippen – a friend of a friend of nearly everyone I can place near the crime scene. There is something here, something that I am not certain has been hidden, but something I am not seeing all the same. Hewlett wants us to think him guilty of abduction –possible murder, and I don’t know why. I imagine, however, it has something to do with Simcoe based on the way he reacted to Hewlett’s name during my interview with him. I know you were removed from your investigation, but I personally keep copies of old files -”

“I can’t give you anything, Tallmadge. I was removed for misconduct – interrogating a suspect who was a minor at the time without first assigning an appropriate adult. You must forgive me for being so direct but my opinions are of little worth to you here.”

Fine, Ben thought, let’s stick to facts then.

“Why are these files of any interest to the French military?”

“I don’t have the security clearance.”

“Please. Anything you can offer -”

“Pathology insisted that the wounds the victim sustained were implemented with a heavy, blunt object. I never found the weapon they were looking for. In truth, I always assumed that John Graves Simcoe was capable of inflicting such injuries under certain circumstances – under these certainly. The victim had been released from prison a few weeks before the incident transpired. This being, mind, the same man Simcoe once claimed to have taken him as a hostage after a shoot-out in a refugee safe house. He is still in a medicated coma. The DGSE has asked my government to keep the victim in that suspended state and they have been happy to cooperate. At this point, I doubt we will ever know what happened that night. I would,” he sighed, “you might pursue a line of questioning with regard to the dismissed claim from 2002. I imagine disciplinary measures would be taken were you to inquire further about the file in the Interpol database. Be cautious. I’ll try to lend all of the support I am able to, but if you’ll excuse me I have twenty years of possible tax fraud to sort through, more pressure to see this through quickly and discreetly that I dare contend with, and a snake pit of suspects downstairs - unrelenting in their manners and niceties, all.”

Ben thanked him for the advice he had no intention of heeding. When the call had finished, he phoned Lafayette. His foreign ally either could not, or would not say anything about France’s intentions, beyond that if his government cleared it he would be happy to speak to the suspects about the matter.

He stared at his computer, looking over the dismissed report without truly reading it, feeling that he had already been defeated by the mistakes of those in his chosen profession. Simcoe had once wanted to be honest. Hewlett had noble reasons to lie.  Ben himself was curious to discover just how far he would need to aggravate their enmity before obtaining answers directly relevant to Benedict Arnold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hide and Seek should be back soon with the rest of Ben’s work week, Simcoe and Hewlett’s _extremely_ confrontational breakfast, Akinbode’s heartbreak, and (far too) much more.  
>  Bad news is that I have an academic schedule no one would envy, a mother-in-law in hospital, and multiple sport and social commitments that are all eating into my ability to update. The good news is, the next chapter (part two of _this_ chapter) is written. Mostly. I’m sure I will find areas for improvement.
> 
> Comments and Kudos and always appreciated, never necessary, but certainly serve to motivate me. Hope to hear from you and hope to see you again soon. XOXO- Tav
> 
> Up Next: _“… and John - a final word of advice on how to properly fake a relationship, don’t be afraid to fall in love.”_ (aww!)


	20. The Devil’s Advocate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abe allows paranoia to govern his game theory in a high stakes match. Mary fights a losing battle against her growing feelings. Simcoe and Hewlett end their delicate ceasefire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovely faces, what’s good? Sorry this update took (what? three weeks?) longer than I anticipated, and I am sorry I had to cut so much of what you were promised for the sake of flow. If you follow me on social media you may know that my academic plan is absolutely insane right now and that I doubt it will let up much for the next few months. Updates will continue to be sporadic (and somehow still _late_ ) because the fates in their cruelty continue to refuse me the joy that is endless editing.  
> Every three weeks? Every month? Were that I could tell you. Alas.
> 
> What I _can_ advise is this chapter carries with it some heavy warnings.  
>  You want to do the thing? Yo – **violence** , language, blatant manipulation, international intrigue, extramarital affairs, minor references to presumed drug use, medical malpractice, expired non-dairy creamer, dialog. 
> 
> Notice how one of those was bolded? Your favourite character probably gets hurt. Tja …
> 
> Shall we then?

However rare, there were moments Abe Woodhull was grateful to be living at him in his late twenties.  When his five-year-old son started acting up whilst he was on the telephone with the producer of a local radio program about giving the station an interview, he was happy that his father was on hand to step into a parenting role. His comments, however, Abe could have done without.

“Seems he has been misbehaving quite a bit lately,” Richard Woodhull remarked. Abe nodded and held up his finger, knowing that the lecture would not end there.

The producer continued to speak as he looked for a pen to write down the address, taking the daily newspaper from the kitchen table as scrap. It pained him to see Anna Strong’s bewildered expression on the cover, the blurry photograph Edmund Hewlett had snapped with his mobile phone taking up a full half of the front page. He glanced quickly at his father when the producer mentioned they were interested in discussing the band’s take on the same story – the news item it seemed the whole world had become obsessed with - the missing person he and Robert Rogers had hidden in the basement of his condemned house on Setauket’s outskirts. Something of an insurance policy, as Rogers put it. Something to make certain Abe kept his mouth shut.

He could hear his own heartbeat quicken, fearing that the press was already on to them, for the future of the federal republic, for the safety of his wife and son, for the injured senator locked in a dark room with its asbestos, mould, and assortment of vermin. He feared the interview would attract the attention of the NYPD and the other assorted agencies; agencies that Abe concluded from his own unknown prejudice and paranoia were working in conjunction with the illegal alien who botched an assignation attempt. Who courted his ex and lived in his father’s home. With him. With Thomas. With Mary.

He feared what would happen if he refused go on the radio in attempt to promote Culper Ring’s upcoming album. He could not afford to turn down publicity, he could not afford to give Rogers reason to think he was not up to task. The Scot had told him to carry on as usual. Usual, as it happened, meant self-serving rather than self-preserving. Rogers had additionally informed him within the same half hour that he had murdered the Detective Inspector’s brother - that he had left a boy to die on the side of the same road where he had found the injured Arnold.

Abe feared for his family.

Abe feared for his life.

Abe levelled his voice.

He thanked the producer, and, after texting the details to Townsend and Brewster –whose collective tweets to the band’s account had generated the attention they were now receiving – thanked his father for substituting at the breakfast table. Richard Woodhull glanced down at the paper on which Abe had scribbled directions.

“Nancy Smith called to advise that the police are coming in to do an evidence sweep tomorrow morning,” he said, alluding to the article. Normally his father’s lack of interest in what he hoped would prove a minor success would have aggravated Abe, perhaps even pained him. He considered this with caution immediately after he responded, repulsed,

“The District Attorney notified you beforehand?”

Abe wondered about the legality of the move. He worried that if his father enjoyed such privilege in a land where all were equal under the law, Setauket’s little king would warrant the same concession.

Hope alone sustained him.

Abraham Woodhull was, as recent events had lead him to discover, something of an idealist. He could not believe the greatest criminal justice system the world over was corrupt to its core. There had to be an ally, someone on the inside of the investigation who wanted to expose the conspiracy, to correct wrongs and condemn the guilty as much as he himself did. There had to be someone he could trust to punish Hewlett and his abettors to the full extent of the law. Someone who, doubtlessly, would be as visibly angry about Smith’s leak as he was. Or so he hoped.

Abe looked at the time he had jotted down. Eight o’clock in the morning seemed an ungodly hour to be anywhere. It was made worse by the fact that he would be gone whist CSI did there duty, that he would be unable to observe Tallmadge’s team, in order to determine who might be sympathetic to his plight.

“As a matter of curtesy,” his father continued. “Abraham, I’m bringing this up -”

“You think she told Hewlett too? Or Anna?” Abe interrupted, unable to listen to his father dance around his misguided assumptions that he brought illicit recreational substances into their family home. Even if he were using –which he was not - Abe he would never expose Thomas to drugs and resented the suggested slight to his parenting. Though, he considered, as it was of Mary’s imaginings of the extramarital relations in which he was not, in fact, engaged, perhaps it for the best that his father thought him drugged. Best for him, for Senator Arnold, and for the man who held them both hostage by the secrets that they shared.

“Why the concern?” Richard asked passing over judgement in favour of condemnation.

You too? Abe thought, answering with a glare, hoping it would bring an end to the inquiry.

“Anna Strong will not be returning to Whitehall until Hewlett’s name has been cleared if her mother has anything to say in the matter. If I have anything to say in the matter she’ll not be returning at all,” Richard announced to Abe’s private relief. She, at least, was safe from him for now.

“It’s your house,” he replied dismissively.

“As long as they keep paying rent I have no legal grounds on which to evict them,” his father said after an extended pause.

“I’m sure you can find a loophole.”

The judge grunted in response. Abe was not sure if this was approval or agreement or if he simply needed to clear his throat. He had returned to ignoring Abe and making airplane noises to get his grandson to eat a few more Corn Flakes when Thomas bit him with a light laugh.

“Hey there Sprout, that’s a no-no,” Abe scolded, surprised at his son’s behaviour. Thomas rarely acted out. He had never been a biter, even as a toddler. Abe asked his son what was going on, if there was anything upsetting him, reminding him that _we use our words in this house to express ourselves, not our teeth. Never that._ Thomas began to talk about his mother. Richard spoke over him.

“He did that yesterday in school too. I called the office when Mary said classes had been cancelled until Monday due to a breakout of E. coli, to see if parents were being advised to bring the children to a clinic. I was told that there was no such breakout and that Thomas had been suspended for the rest of the week due to bad behaviour. Any idea why your wife would lie about such matters?”

“None.”

Abe thought about Mary’s apology last night. Maybe Rogers had made threats against Thomas to her directly. Maybe she had brought him home where she thought his father could keep him safe.

Mary did not know about Hewlett’s failed assassination attempt and for her safety, his, and that of their son, Abe needed to keep it that way. He rose from the table. He boiled an entire carton of eggs to feed to Arnold, telling his father was bringing them to work site to munch on as he replaced drywall, promising his son that they would to colour eggs for Easter together that night when he came home.

Home. The word lingered.

Whitehall was a home they shared with a killer.

A home they would all soon need to leave provided Hewlett planned to stay.

Abe wondered if they would be safer in their house on the outskirts of town with the vermin and the victim and the airborne toxins than they were at his father’s mansion. He wondered if there was anywhere in New York where they would be safe from his unlikely ally in the fight to preserve American values. He wondered if anyone on the police force might be sympathetic to the nation’s founding ideals which so many men had fought and died for, or, if America was entering a new age in which opposition to the executive was dealt with harshly by foreign agents as it was in nations as rich in oil as they were poor in human rights.

He wondered how far the conspiracy went and if there was anything that he, a college dropout with an almost-famous garage band, could possibly do to restore order to the world.

He was an American. He had to try.

 

* * *

 

It was the second morning in a row Mary Woodhull had woken up to the sight of her eyes stained with the mascara she had failed to remove the night before, black, blurred, with sharp daggers etched by her eyelashes into her dry, placid skin. After thoroughly washing her face of the smoke, soil and saline the night had left her with, she stared at the small imperfections she had camouflaged with cosmetic, at the new blackheads she blamed on her failure to remove it, questioning if the cracked façade she had woken to or the catastrophe it sought to conceal was more metaphoric of her mood.

Mary took a deep breath as she took out her makeup bag from under the bathroom sink. She knew how to clean up a mess.

Abe was still sleeping when she left for her morning commute. As were Thomas, Richard and Aberdeen. Anna and Edmund had not returned – at least, there had been no answer when she tapped lightly on the door – relieved at the absence of response. Six o’clock in the morning was no hour for the conversation she sought. It was no hour for words at all. She attempted to access Hewlett’s WC through the hall entrance out of habit. It was locked. She smiled. It was likely for the best.

After scratching the ice from her rear window, Mary drove away from Whitehall, feeling as though she too had never come home at all. She replayed the conversation she had with her husband the night before in her head.

_“I don’t feel the same way.”_

Neither, thought Mary, do I, my love. Neither do I.

As she crossed the bridge into the city, she considered as she often did on her morning commute all the places she might go if she did not take the Manhattan exit, if her problems would cease to exist in an altered setting. She wondered which of the fancy high-rises John lived in, if it would be too brazen to ring him and see if he wanted to meet for breakfast instead, if she should even meet him at all after the ferocity of their kisses had threatened the falsity of their illicit liaison. Mary felt a light tremble move from her lower pelvis to her inner thigh at the memory of his strong, wide-eyed embrace; of the way his body felt against hers without the senator’s corpse coming between them.

She had told him she wanted normal. This had been, and remained, a lie. But Mary Woodhull was accustom to lying – to herself, above all. If she could nearly be convinced for the sake of her child that her marriage had been happy and would be again, she could imagine the past two nights had not tempted her. Had not occurred.

With time she was certain, she could ignore the rush she felt when she saw John seated in the bookstore café upon entering. He wore a dark suit which made the marks on his knuckles burn, his long, fiery hair loosened, allowed to cascade over his shoulder to cover the contusions she had left on his ear and neck. He reminded her of the undead antiheros of the novels of her youth, the kind that killed and fucked and embraced the mad chaos of eternity, rather than the glittering virgins that occupied the absent thoughts of today’s teen readers. She wondered what books he had read as a boy, what shaped his subconscious desires – she craved the secret, vivid details of what they might entail. When she saw a copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ creased by his long fingers as he poured over the words of her favourite writer, she wondered what works he consumed absent of suggestion.

Mary Woodhull did not want normal with John Graves Simcoe. When curiosity forced her eyes to drift to the pile of books between emptied cups of tea littering the table, she knew he would not lightly let her surrender to familiarities she fought so hard to control.

Aside from a colouring book he had presumably bought for Thomas (along with a juice box and a snack), the rest of his reading list seemed to consist of divorce manuals and self-help books targeting women much like herself. Her approach had not broken his focus as he studied Austen, having commandeered a crayon to his service, making scribbles in the text.

“I’m sorry, am I late?” she asked, apologising that her son would not be joining them as she gestured towards the booster seat on the stool she originally pulled out, across from the man she was now certain she would have done better to avoid.

He had - intentionally or not - left her with no choice other than to sit beside him, close enough that she could smell his musky aftershave. Close enough that she noticed the light scars on the corner of his lower lip made pale with time. He brushed her fingers with his as he sat the book atop the others. The guilt she felt the night before in her martial bed rose. She felt the rush of being lifted against the tree, the sensation of the same fingers curing against the curves of her posterior. She suddenly felt sad, though she could not say if the greater grief came from the presence ring on her finger or the shame she and John had brought to what it represented.

“Quite the contrary, Mrs. Woodhull. I arrived rather early,” Simcoe assured her. There was something off about his voice, not just the eerie yet enticing pitch she had grown accustom to. He was absent, disinterested. His unblinking eyes did not seek hers as he said, “I did not know what to get you.”

“Tall White.”

“Very well,” Simcoe chirped with a forced mirth, “If you’ll excuse me briefly -”

“I’m married,” Mary said. Sharply. A reminder to them both; though, to Mary’s chagrin, one John did not appear to require.

“Hence,” he replied with nonchalance, indicating to his purchase. Still, she noted, he failed to make eye contact.

Mary swallowed and forced a smile. She spoke, knowing that the words she had rehearsed in her mind on the walk from her office were now solely for her benefit. The night had been a dream.

“John, I have a son. I owe it to him if not to myself to make things work with Abraham. I’ve been thinking an antidote about a lot since we parted: A man was walking to work one day when he was in a near accident. Seeing how quickly life could have been taken from him, he decided to alter his dramatically in pursuit of another existence. He left his job, his family, his town and moved somewhere new to begin afresh. Ten years later, the same man is on his way work, has another near death experience and realises that for all of his efforts, the life that he is now living is no different from the one he left behind,” Mary place her hand on the pile of books. “I can’t – John, it was shock. Last night. That is all it was. This isn’t what I meant when I said I wanted to start something normal with you.”

“Tall White?” he pipped in response, adrift. Mary wondered if he had heard what she had said at all, or if men could ever be counted upon to listen. When he left the table, she thumbed through his Austen, noting the lines he marked and the notes he wrote in the margins.  She wondered if he enjoyed it or if he worried that he would forget what to say. She wondered if he in fact wanted to talk to her about her literary interests, though it seemed clear he did not share them.

“You’re a fast reader,” she remarked when he returned with her small cup of steamed milk and expresso, a few packages of sugar and anther tea for himself.

“I’ll confess, I bought a digital copy of the work last night and got to chapter five. It is something of a tick, I prefer hard copies. I’ve always done this, mark passages and take notes as I read. My father brought me on it.”

“There is something romantic to it,” Mary mused. “Um, romantic in that -”

“I know what was meant, Mrs. Woodhull,” he replied briskly, quickly taking a sip of his beverage before the tea had been allowed to seep and cool.

“John. It’s Mary. Please. And, and thank you for the coffee. You’ll have to let me treat you next time.”

“The pleasure would be all mine, Mary.”

His tone suggested, however, that this would be their last meeting. Mary drank her coffee quickly. John sipped at his tea, electing to broad rather than speak. His elegant fingers tapped against the table. Mary tried to fill the time he made apparent she was wasting.

“Is that a British thing? The tea? I’ve never really seen Hewlett drink it, but then I never really see that much of Hewlett.”

“Hewlett is,” he stopped. Swallowed. “Or I suppose was – Hew was more inclined towards unfiltered coffee with flavoured milk substitute, but then the Scots are generally known for their poor diet. Do you require -” he started, offering her a package of sugar. She took his hand, rather than the package in it. Their eyes met for the first time that afternoon. His were as red and raw as the pair she had woken up to. Mary considered for the first time that the end of their affair, however short and spurious, was as difficult for Simcoe as it was for her.

“Thank you. For all that you’ve done and all you thought to do for me.”

“The offer of my assistance is always open to you.”

“I just need normal, John. I just need my normal, simple life to return to the way it was. I want to be friends. I want to read the romantic scribbles you make in my favourite books and go to your soccer games at the weekend and -”

“I want normal full stop, Mary. I don’t know how to put this in a manner which won’t upset you, but you and I, we’re not afforded that luxury at the moment. As long as the investigation is ongoing, we have to be cautious. I have my own set objections to the whole affair, but for now it is needs must. At least whilst we are in public. I like you, Mary. I think it is possible if Tuesday night had never happened you would like me, too.”

Mary Woodhull fought a losing battle against her widening grin.

“I do like you, quite a lot at that,” she said.

It took a full minute for him to reply curtly, “You shouldn’t.”

 

* * *

 

As far as mornings went, his had been rather pleasant given the circumstances. John Graves Simcoe had woken up to a pounding headache and an ear swollen with infection. When he attempted to change the bandaging he had been assaulted by his own blood, dried onto the gauze, tearing further at his redden, pus-filled skin as he fought. He whined, winced, and once freed from bondage and bandage closed his pale lips into a light smile at the thought of the woman who had wounded him. The woman who he plans to meet that afternoon. The woman whose cherry lip-gloss he could still taste through the flavours of alcohol-rich stomach acid lingering from disgorgement and the mouthwash he struggled to believe could make his breath smell like mint.

The woman who wanted normal – who thought him capable of that abstract.

Simcoe looked in the medicine cabinet behind his bathroom mirror. Finding only the medication meant to level him, medicine that had fallen short of its promise and did not serve his immediate interest, he called out to his houseguest, suddenly grateful for his presence, or rather, his heart condition.

“Oyster, you have any aspirin?”

“Always.”

“Let’s have it then.”

When he got no reply, he walked out only to see Hewlett staring at the contents of his refrigerator, wincing in woe at the absence of options.

“I haven’t been home much this week,” Simcoe clarified.

“I know,” Hewlett sighed, closing the door and his eyes along with it. “We have to talk, John.”

“With given names?” Simcoe chirped mockingly. They came from the same world so to speak, a world where first names were largely only spoken at baptisms and funerals, where one’s sense of self was define by their place in a line of succession. Edmund Hewlett rarely referred to his own siblings by their hideously similar forenames, preferring to settle on the description of their relation to him. In a misguided effort to seem less given to classism, he afforded everyone the same distance, often against their protests. Simcoe, for his part, never complained. He liked the order and formality. He liked the way Hewlett half-hissed his cognomen as if it were a curse. He liked jeering him at practice and on the pitch _its Captain Simcoe now_. He liked watching Hewlett’s face twist with swallowed strife.

Hewlett wore no expression now, nor did he respond.

“Edmund?” Simcoe offered in diffidence.

Hewlett swallowed, spoke, or rather, stammered, “What you said last night - understand that I, ah that is  - I don’t wish the significance of what was spoken to be undermined by what I am about to ask. Anna, I – I do love her. I have the truest intentions towards her, though perhaps not the purest means of obtaining my objectives. I mean to live,” he said, rubbing his temples. “For her, with her. I mean to live.”

“I’m concerned about where this is going.” He was concerned about exactly how hungover Hewlett was, concerned that given the respective mass to volume ratio of the liquor they had consumed in the morning’s small hours that he himself risked sounding comparatively ridiculous when he spoke to the lovely Mary Woodhull that afternoon.

“As you ought well to be.”

Hewlett was right in his request - more visual than verbal - they needed the cure of English breakfast meats.

“Aspirin?” Simcoe asked.

“Ah right, yes.” Hewlett walked over to his suit jacket hanging on the back of one of the dining chairs and took a slim package from its inner pocket.

Simcoe read the packaging.

“Yea, so I’m going to get us something to eat. Shouldn’t take these on an empty stomach. There is a bagel place down the street, what do you want on yours? Bacon? Sausage? Both?”

“That is ah, that is rather generous of you but -” Hewlett started, pausing as though he expected the strange twists of his exaggerated facial features to make a compelling argument for him. Maybe he was trying to translate something from Latin.

“Look mate, I’m not having another little heart to heart whilst I’m hungry. Here, why don’t you sit down and write up an argumentative thesis and I’ll pretend to either read it or to listen in earnest when I return. Bacon or sausage?”

Simcoe hoped Hewlett would leave on his own initiative by the time he returned; despite the fact that he had made him 3.8 million pounds richer over the past eighteen hours; despite the fact that he needed Hewlett’s help with the nuances of writing the program to keep their scheme going; despite the fact that Hewlett did not currently seem fit to drive. Something was off with him. Simcoe reasoned that he had enough to deal with.

“Cheerio’s,” Hewlett said, shattering the fantasy Simcoe had been enjoying of a morning spent without the presence of his sometimes-friend who spoke in riddles and dated references.

“What is a Cheerio?”

“It is a cold cereal,” he confessed, embarrassed. “Anna is insisting that I go on a diet. I’ve been forbidden anything that might help to cure a hangover.” Simcoe smiled. Not only had he evidently dodged a bullet but unpredictably said shot had hit Hewlett hard.

“Even Irn Bru?” he taunted, not knowing where he might find the cotton-candy flavoured Scottish cola should whimpering swell think to request it. 

“That is a myth. That it cures hangovers. I have no idea about the cholesterol level.”

“Shame. So what is a cholesterol?”

“It is derived from the Greek meaning anything one might actually think to eat - breakfast meats, red meat, blueberry muffins, oddly. I haven’t had much time to look at Google since yesterday morning.”

“What is that then? Vegan or something? Bloody hell Oyster - that is it. That’s it. I’m done. Christ knows I have put up with a lot of your shit. To tally this year alone, I got Andre to get you a prescription of your heart medication whilst you were in hospital as your bottle ran out with your insurance. I spent hours texting you to make sure you were alright when I could have had more fun with any other app, I sat idly by as I watched you steal Anna Strong and I agreed to help you with your finances – again - even given how well that worked out for me the last time. You are a real piece of shit sometimes, Hew. To be honest, it is what I always liked about you - but God help me, if you go all vegan, gluten free, fair trade and organic on me we are though. A man has his limits. These are mine.”

“That is not what low - cholesterol is. Not - not exactly,” he paused, shifting slightly where he stood. “Ah, not to segue, but you honestly got Dr Andre to write me a prescription for something other than my Xanax? Is he qualified to do that?”

“It was needs must. The thought of you waking up in hospital without insurance, being forced to pull a Robeson just to cover your medical needs didn’t sit well with me. As far as Andre, phycology is just an excuse for the behaviours we can explain but cannot condone. Is the good doctor truly qualified to prescribe anything? The pills he gives out clearly are not doing much by means of sorting our innermost demons.”

“I … I had no idea. I suppose that explains why he has been keeping me at length.”

“That or guilt. The bloody charlatan,” Simcoe replied, thinking thanks would have been the more appropriate response on Hewlett’s part.

“That seems unfair.”

“Unfair is your continued insistence in casting me as the villain in your narrative.”

“No, John. If anything I’m the villain in yours.” The familiarity was new, disconcerting, the sorrow omnipresent as of late. Simcoe elected to ignore both in pursuit of the greater good.

“Right then. Make yourself a tea, fill up another apologetic treatise with reference to Hardcore History and Asterix and I’ll secure myself something to eat and try to find a Cheerio for you.”

 

* * *

 

“Did you remember the milk?” Hewlett asked as he looked sceptically at the box Simcoe had returned with forty minutes later.

“What milk?”

“For the cereal?”

“You don’t need milk,” Simcoe assured him. It had not occurred to him to purchase any. “You brought that non-dairy creamer into my house a few months ago. I’m positive you still have some.”

“I think it is expired.”

“American food doesn’t expire,” he corrected, thinking on the box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese he had purchased upon his arrival when everyone he met had praised the American delicacy. He had not eaten it. It was still good. It would be for the next quarter century. He pulled it from the cupboard to prove a point. Hewlett silently seethed. Simcoe smiled, grabbing the Coffee Mate from its place in the refrigerator.

“Ah -”

“Oh. So it does,” Simcoe read. He could accept defeat so long as he was not made to pay its retributions. “Well Oyster,” he said as he continued to pour the thick, lumpy substance that barely qualified as a liquid into a bowl, “it’s blood in, blood out ‘innit?”

Hewlett clenched his jaw and shifted his posture.

“That is actually, well that rather leads me directly into something you and I rather need to discuss. Grab us a cider?”

“You really want a drink after last night.”

“I think I am going to need it.”

Simcoe chuckled to himself, returning the flask of the dearly departed faux dairy to the top shelf and grabbing a stolen bottle from the bottom, imaging Anna’s anger directed at someone who to his mind truly deserved it.

“So when you see John Andre in rehab -” he jeered.

“Simcoe, I – I well, I suppose there is no easy way to say this. Understand that I mean this in all seriousness and with the greatest possible care. I need you to punch me as hard as you possibly can. The cider is for afterwards.”

Simcoe perked at the odd yet earnest plea. It was better than an overdue apology. Moments like this might convince one of the existence of a higher power. Considering the circumstances to which he had awoken, this was turning out to be a rather pleasant morning indeed.

“Appealing to my appreciation for schadenfreude are we?”

“The Coffee Mate is schadenfreude, what you’re laughing over is sadism, and no. I’m trying to help you. John, there is no easy way for me to say this - look at your hands.”

He did. His fingers twitched from neither anxiety nor anticipation.

“What am I looking at?”

“Other side.”

His knuckles were raw. He clenched his hands into fists, not intending on a fight, rather to keep his fellow ex-pat from observing his fear. His scars grew redder as the skin stretched.

“It’s not what you think,” he defended.

“I’m not a copper. It doesn’t quite matter what I think. But if you listen to me carefully and do exactly as I say, together we can influence what Tallmadge and his team infer from your ah...”

“The detective? Honestly mate, what are you on about? I’m cutting you off,” he said, trying to excuse himself from the discussion as he robbed his guest of the cereal and cider with a jolt.

“I already have bruises on my neck. Thanks to my arrest, your character testimony and Anna’s attempt at seduction, we can make the police think that the blood on your hands is mine –not, well, not Senator Arnold’s - that ours is merely a story of love and betrayal.”

“Arnold? Senator Arnold? Have you lost your fucking mind? Why would I -” he stopped. Parried. “As I recall Oyster, I’m not the one selling myself as a murder suspect.”

Hewlett straighten his posture and nicked his chin forward as his dark eyes narrowed slightly. He spoke sceptically.

“You rang me yesterday morning to ask for the telephone number of a woman you later wanted to convince me you had been in the throes of having a torrid affair with. The Austen was a nice touch, I’ll allow you that.”

“I later confessed to you that it was a fake affair to help her take revenge against her husband without the stain of a greater sin -” Simcoe began to object, pitch raised, fingernails burrowing into the flesh of his palm. He could handle Hewlett’s assumptions and accusations when they were directed at him. Alluding to Mary Woodhull was a step too far.

“Greater sin? Greater – Simcoe,” he hissed, “I have every reason to conclude that you and Mrs. Woodhull murdered -”

Simcoe hit him in the gut when he dared to speak her name. Hewlett braced himself on the counter, gaging and grasping for the air he had lost.

“Good,” he said when he regained himself. “Now do that four or five times more. Try to avoid the face. Anna and I still need to fake a great number of photographs for immigration.”

Only Hewlett possessed the vanity to baselessly allege one of a crime whilst openly admitting to his own. Simcoe shook his head in disgust. Why was he the only one this side of the Atlantic who saw this man for the monster he was?

“I’m having a fake affair with a woman I’m falling in love with,” he admitted. “That is why I didn’t have her number, I never expected it would go this far. I’m not going to fight you, Edmund. Mary, she sees the best in me. She thinks me normal.” This, he thought, after truly witnessing me at my worst. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to think of _myself_ as normal? Unlike you, I’m not keen on proving a constant disappointment.”

“I won’t press charges,” Hewlett continued, unmoved. “Even if the police think you are bloody mad they won’t be able to do anything to reprehend you, and they won’t have any reason to look into you and / or Mary. Lads fight sometimes. Let’s prove it to these yanks.”

“I’m not a monster. And your right ill, you know that you paranoid little twat? My hands haven’t an alibi, I’ll admit – but can you truly think them capable or murder? You, who can call me your friend, who call yourself mine whilst mounting evidence to the contrary, you who -”

“It took me a while, but when Akinbode mentioned that the contents of your refrigerator matched the items stolen from DeJong’s inventory it was not difficult to put the pieces together. The erratic behaviour, the -”

“It’s bullocks. You are a coward, Hewlett. I don’t know what you’re playing at but if you truly thought me guilty of such a heinous act you wouldn’t be dining with me,” he pushed the bowl of Cheerio’s back, taking a bite of his grease soaked sandwich in an expression of dominance. If he hoped Hewlett’s mouth lacked space enough for rotten milk and words both, he was to be disappointed.

“I can handle you, Simcoe. Now,” Hewlett continued briskly, “I’ll finish off the cider after breakfast in order to numb the pain I’m sure you’ll take no small pleasure in inflicting. You’ll put the bottles in recycling on your way to meet your lovely Mrs. Woodhull. As far as the wine, divide it among the derelicts who gather outside of Trader Joe’s. I googled the label, it is the only grocer in the area to carry that brand.”

“You want me to play homeless or hipster in a Trader Joe’s parking lot?” Simcoe challenged, testing if this was an elaborate joke. He did not know if it was worse thinking that Hewlett thought of him in such terms, of that he was almost dismissive of the behaviour.  

“Herculean task, I know. I’ll help you if need be.”

“After I, sorry, is this after I beat you up? Hewlett, if I were to actually hit you as you ask of me, you wouldn’t get up,” he sneered.

“You’re not a monster,” Hewlett echoed, “and this isn’t Glasgow.”

His tone was surprisingly sympathetic but his words chilled the air. Simcoe considered the possible outcomes of what might happen should he take the offer presented to him, not entirely trusting that he would have the appropriate incentive to stop at mere injury, tepid though his hatred was.

“And Tallmadge isn’t Ferguson,” he retorted. “This won’t work.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Not you. Myself.”

“John -” Hewlett started. If _Simcoe_ was a curse as it passed his lips, _John_ was a threat.

“You don’t know what happened! Not then, not now. You weren’t there,” he stretched the last word, hoping with it to assign blame that in the end was not Hewlett’s burden, though he clearly carried it.

“I’m here now.”

“I’m not guilty.”

“I know,” Hewlett said, placing his pale hand on Simcoe’s bloodied one. “Akinbode and I had a conversation about appearances in interrogation yesterday, and you look – that is, your situation looks like rather – fuck. What I mean - and all I mean - is this: the matter remains that we have a lot to sort out before Tallmadge comes to what seems a logical conclusion and I have a means to an end. Can’t you understand without necessitating that I be more direct? I am trying to help.”

What Simcoe understood was the unspoken, shared reality that went better unacknowledged. Hewlett’s empathy for his plight forced him to concede that he, too, was terrified at the prospect of returning to the sense of isolation inherent to the realities imposed by immigration. The animosity that existed between them was a lesser demon than alienation; ego was usually enough on its own to expunge this notion from Simcoe’s active mind.

He had no idea what Hewlett’s excuse was for the allusion. He never did. It hurt to be reminded all the same.

“Believe me, he warned, tightening his fist as he felt Hewlett’s fingertips graze his knuckles, “you don’t realize what you are asking.”

“Anna told me last night that she fears she lost the man she loves to the worst within him when she woke me up to ask me to take out a business loan for her,” Oyster continued, lost again in his own narrative.  “It’s possible she is right. I don’t want this, John - any of it - but I fear the only way out is to keep moving forward. Let me help you the same way you are helping me.”

Hewlett’s offer was incomparable with all that which Simcoe had willing done for him. Suggesting otherwise was a step too far.

“You know what the ironic thing about all of this is? I made some horrible accusations against Dr Andre so you wouldn’t need to resort to literally robbing a bank in order to cover the costs of your healthcare, and yet you - you arrogant, opportunistic little shite - roped me into an insider trading scheme involving information you somehow lifted from a French foreign agent with enough clout to get the leader of Mussad on the line. You then stupidly set yourself up as the prime suspect in the Arnold case to give you an excuse to keep the spy game going. Somehow, somehow you still have it within you to stand before me, accusing me of murder based on shaky assumptions and circumstantial evidence? I’m not a monster, Hewlett, but you sure as all fuck are. So no. I don’t trust you. I don’t know your end game with all of this. Frankly, I don’t know that you are decisive enough to have one.”

“Tallmadge has no logical reason to think that I committed any act contrary to common law, though he is of logical mind,” Hewlett responded calmly. “In all likelihood, the only reason I became the investigation’s primary target is the fact that yesterday morning all – including you yourself – had reason to believe my ultimate intention was to enter into a dishonest union with the daughter of the district attorney. Though, had Anna once mentioned that her mother-”

“And here I thought your epic love could withstand all obstacles,” interrupted, rolling his eyes.

“I would have never been so quick to call the English press in front of a potential crime scene.”

“Why did you?”

“To see if it was back on the market, ah, rather, to insure that it would be by the time of our scheduled meeting. It was an error of judgement.”

“What made you so certain I would help?”

“I assumed us to be in love with the same woman and know you to have always been infatuated with this dark idea you have of me. You couldn’t resist,” he smiled. “You never bloody can.”

“This idea you think me to have of you is one you seem set on reinforcing.”

“That is not my intention. Everything I’ve done since, well since smoking outside The Newsroom yesterday has been for your own protection. For your own good. Don’t you get it? It is not entirely about the money. If they keep coming after me they won’t come after you. If we just give them enough plausible doubt they never will and you can be free to live and love or to pretend to yourself and to the world that there is no core truth to your lies.”

“So I can be free to help you increase your wealth and standing.”

“If that is what you need to think.”

Simcoe did think, Hewlett quiet clearly did not.

“They are going to find out about our little trading scheme. Tallmadge, Lafayette, Hamilton. You already ensured that inevitability, you damned fool.”

“Dandridge is under the professional opinion that ours is a corrosive bond. The blame falls with me and I’ll except full consequence should your algorithm fail or should they not buy our explanation.”

“I imagine that is easier to say when your ideas of _law, order_ and _authority_ have only ever had implications only for people who don’t have house words. This is America; it is a different beast entirely. How long do you think you can last? They will come after you, your family. If our own government can’t charge you directly with corruption they will get you on tax evasion for claiming charitable contribution on money that never left company control.”

“We have been more than overpaying out taxes for years. The cost has been covered tenfold, and that not counting the public services that only exist in Great Britain due to my father’s generosity. Do you honestly expect that the government did not already know? If they had any intention of moving they would have done so by now.”

“You have given them reason to go after you.”

“I’ve given them reason not to go after you.”

“They can still press charges for child abuse. To my knowledge, there is no statute of limitations for the evils I accredit to your father’s hands. The man belongs in jail. I know you know that too, deep down. If not perhaps we ought to be having another little talk altogether.”

“I’ll refuse to press charges if it even comes to that,” Hewlett deflected.

“The government could declare you mentally unstable – hardly a fete given your recent escapades – and sue on your behalf.”

“Opportunity cost. They won’t because it is not worth it to them to cover the court expense of losing a powerful ally. My family has nothing to lose. Even from bad publicity. With all the fear and speculation over Brexit, Arnold and the next ISIS attack - this winds up being a ticket item on page twenty-seven if it is even exposed. All I gave police is an excuse to keep me a suspect in their investigation. I can use this to keep lines of communication open with the French keeping you safe and  … ah, adding to our pot as it were.”

“Are you mad? Honestly, what makes you think that Lafayette won’t just shoot you given what you already know if the DGSE ever discovers exactly what they let slip?”

“My brother’s wife’s father.”

They were in Glasgow. Simcoe coughed, tasting his first cigarette all over again while Hewlett frantically wiped the blood from the crutches he then used as the sirens turned the corner.

They were damned.

“It isn’t your army, Hewlett,” Simcoe corrected. “You can’t march to the gates of Rome and demand they be opened.”

“It is the most powerful combat force in the world and when it is loyal to one man you don’t make an enemy of him or his relations. Nothing is ever going to come out about Glasgow, just as one is ever going to tie you to Arnold.”

“No one is trying to tie me to Arnold! You don’t know what happened! I don’t know what happened. I don’t know.” That much, he admitted to himself, was half the problem. “And you always act like you do but if you did you wouldn’t be so fucking cavalier about it all.”

“I’m trying to keep you safe,” Hewlett repeated softly. Simcoe wonder who he was trying to convince.

“You’re trying to turn a damn profit is what you are doing. You know what the worst thing is about you – about all of you Hewletts? You truly believe in your own propaganda. How fucked, honestly how fucked must your mind be to have convinced itself that in recruiting my help in burning your own bloody house to its foundations that you are somehow saving me from the hand of the law? I’m not a murderer, Hewlett, though now I am not completely convinced that you are not. As long as you want to play with the past, let me ask - as I’m sure your coppers will - _why wouldn’t the prodigal son of the so-said fair and righteous try to redeem himself by taking out a war hawk?_ We know you had every opportunity to do so given that Anna Strong is your only alibi, that she is only with you because you offer her some financial assurances you would be unable to deliver upon were it not for my assistance, it is already on record that you cannot please her. Tell me, Hew,” he spat, “is all this your attempt to prove that yourself a man to her given that you … otherwise lack the means?”

Hewlett’s thin lips twisted upon themselves before falling in surrender.

“I’m going to need you to hit me,” he repeated.

“What are you trying to prove?”

“Nothing! I’m trying to ensure that nothing can be proven. For once in your godforsaken life do as you are told. Make it like we were in a fight and let’s be done with it.”

“I’m not a murderer!” Simcoe insisted - at that point, it should be noted- rightfully. He pushed Hewlett on his shoulder with enough force to unbalance him, causing him to fall from his stool. Simcoe rose, offering his hand in peace.

“No. You’re my best friend,” Hewlett said as he took it. Only a Hewlett could effectively use a term of endearment as an insult. Only with a Hewlett could _friend_ possibly be taken as one.

“I’m not a monster either, Edmund.”

“I neither said nor insinuated that you were. I think you’ve found yourself in an unenviable situation for which you’ve constructed a rather poor cover. Regardless of what happened, we are undeniably profiting from it and while I’ll admit that that much is on me, you ought to be more cautious.”

“I hate you.”

“Its mutual. Now hit me as though you mean it. For Mrs. Woodhull’s sake if not for your own.”

In that moment, as in many prior, John Graves Simcoe truly did loath Edmund Hewlett. He hated his vanity, his loyalty, his accuracy. He hated that he knew how to get under his skin. He hated that he let him.

 

* * *

 

“And what did you do?” Mary Woodhull whispered, her eyes wide with expectation. Expectation, Simcoe noted, not fear.

“As I was told,” he answered, afraid to let her down, afraid to give detail that would make her ever see him in the dull glow of Anna Strong’s headlights. At first Hewlett had continued to speak incessantly, long after Simcoe had ceased to truly listen. Memory, in her kindness would eventually erase the awful sounds his beloved enemy made as he cried out for mercy. Simcoe would never forget, however, the long silence that followed. Recalling with reluctance (and reluctant admiration and awe) the small eternity it took for Hewlett to sob out in pain, Simcoe felt sorrow, though at the time he could not name it as such.

“Shit, Mary I -”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you?”

She kissed his hand. It ached from action and stung from sanitation. He wondered if she could taste the blood it had spilt or the steam that had fogged up the bathroom mirror while it fought its twin in the sink for soap.

“This isn’t normal, Mary. Forgive my falling short of your wants and expectations. Had he just left your name out of the discussion I have to think -”

“No, John, you’re right. It’s not normal. But it is real. My husband would never raise a finger to defend my honour. You assaulted your closet friend to defend our alibi. To defend me. Us. And he asked you to on top of it. You are a good person in a strange situation not entirely of your making. You did your best and you were honest about it. You are honest. With me. You can’t know what that means.”

“I didn’t just hit him, Mary.”

“Are you okay? Are you … and Edmund okay now?”

“Never. We’re just, as Oyster would disdainfully put it, we’re – he and I – we’re just better than everyone else. We were better. Were. I’m sorry I – I don’t know what it is I’m meant to do now.”

“Don’t worry. I know how to clean up a mess.”

“I know.”

He began to smile for the first time since leaving the flat. Mary leaned over to kiss him, gentle at first, but passionate. The last full sentences Edmund Hewlett might ever speak ran through his mind before her tongue parted his lips and the world beyond her embrace ceased to concern him.

_“Then give the cops a reason to think that everything you and Mary have undertaken together has been permissible under New York law. And John – a final word of advice on how to properly fake a relationship, don’t be afraid to fall in love.”_

And in that moment, he wasn’t. And neither, it seemed, was Mary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t have any contextual notes for you all this time, lovely faces – I don’t think that there were many (or any?) cultural or political references that I have not touched on previously, though feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
> 
> I do, however, have a few shout outs this round: [calamity-bean](http://calamity-bean.tumblr.com/) and  
> [mercurygray](http://mercurygray.tumblr.com/) were super, super sweet and gave this little fic some love during #ficrecdays over on Tumblr. It was unexpected and really, unbelievably nice so thank you both once more for your kind words.  
> [grumblebee](http://grumblebee-trilogy.tumblr.com/) saved me once again with her amazing cross-continental DJ-ing skills. Honestly how amazing can a person possibly be to recommend a full play list in like five minutes after being messaged about a random scene in a story they have never read and totally, completely cure one of writer’s block? The girl is a gift.
> 
> (And all of these individuals are far more gifted writers than I – go check their work out!)
> 
> In the event that you are keen after this chapter for a few Anna + Hewlett scenes that were cut, or want a Simcoe + Mary sex dream – [have fun.](http://tavsancuk.tumblr.com/post/157057596840/hide-scenes-that-were-cut-i-dont-know-i)
> 
> If you want to read something light about Hewlett and Simcoe just being lads, there is a H+S Christmas special of sorts. It is about getting to the bar before last call. That is seriously it. [ Enjoy.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8800006/chapters/20174896)
> 
> Up Next: Either sex and fluff filled with porn and puns OR we will dive right back into it and check in with a character we’ve not seen directly in quite some time. Oh John Andre, what oh what have you been up to?
> 
> (I have a preference towards the former option, but I would love to hear your opinion if you have one!)
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, comments and kudos are always appreciated, never necessary, but they do serve my motivation. 
> 
> XOXO - Tav


	21. The Refusal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary and Simcoe explore the increasingly tempting idea of intimacy on the streets of Manhattan during midday traffic. Ben’s tactics (and sexuality …) get called into question by one of his sergeants. Hewlett refuses medical assistance; Anna gives him an ultimatum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am afraid this update may well read as filler, but after what we went through last time it feels necessary. So in lieu of apologising, let’s just do the _thing_ , shall we?
> 
> Warnings include but are not limited to: descriptions of violence and injury, attempted honour killings, cultural / class clashes (say that five times fast), foul language, sexuality and sexual activity, the American health care system, immigration and … a Green Card breakup. *gasp*
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy!

“Would you really want me like that?” John Graves Simcoe asked as he thumbed through the book Mary Woodhull had purchased to aid in expanding their alibi with erotic detail. As he spoke, she imagined him loosening his tie, using it to constrain her to the nearest lamppost and taking her there - right on the streets of Manhattan for all who dared to witness, his bloodstained hands gripping her bare skin as he fought with her nylons and knickers, forcing himself within her with the ferocity by which he kissed.

Her heart skipped with the hope that he secretly harboured similar sentiment towards her.

“You’ve already proven yourself to be inclined toward brutality,” she speculated, smiling, half in spite of herself as she heard his pace quicken.

“Hewlett asked for it,” he muttered, grabbing her wrist. She felt he pulse quicken under the pressure of his calloused fingers. Mary spun around to meet his gaze. John’s unblinking eyes betrayed nothing amorous or obscene. The quick, shallow breaths she felt on her neck as his lips gently grazed it however gave him away.

“Did Arnold?” she whispered.

“In a matter of speaking.”

John dropped the tote bag he was carrying as he cornered her against the side of a skyscraper. The manuals and manuscripts he had purchased hit the sidewalk with a thud. He lifted her chin, drawing her lips to his, unwilling to meet them.

“And here I presumed you only read the critically acclaimed,” he taunted, his words tickling her cheek as they left his mouth. After slowly caressing her jawline with his long fingers, he let it fall with her hopes.

“Why don’t you kiss me?” she asked.

“You have the wrong impression of me Mrs. Woodhull,” he answered, eyes shifting down to the paperback erotica on the pavement.

“In the two days I’ve known you you’ve nearly murdered two men.”

“I’m a warrior, yes, but not a monster. You wound me, Madame.”

John created some distance between his body and hers, not enough for Mary to inhale without being infected by the sweet, strong taste of his tea-drenched respiration; without the musky scent of his aftershave testing her resolve.

“Then what do you like?” she inquired.

“Poetry,” he responded with a slight cock of his head as if inviting her to answer an unspoken challenge.

“In bed?” Mary clarified. John’s hard stare broke.

He smiled, “should that change my answer? Rhythmical compulsion leading to an elevated sense of excitement and imaginative pleasure. Tell me, Mary, have you ever really fucked someone or have you just read about it?”

He leaned towards her as he spoke, reducing the inch that existed between them to a fraction, disillusioning Mary to the limits of her will. She put her arms around his broad shoulders, pulling him into a tight embrace as he lifted her off her feet.

“I’d offer to let you see my personal library, except -” his bed was currently occupied. His fingers began to fiddle with the hem of her tight skirt the way they did with everything. She questioned if he was consciously of this as she felt herself moisten, imagining them in engaging in their nervous dance within her body’s private ballroom.

“You can poetry slam me in a hotel bed anytime, John Graves.”

Taken slightly aback, he seemed caught between laughter and confusion. He choked on a sound that would not form a word. He blinked. Mary was surprised to see that his eyes we capable of closing. She took advantage of the short eclipse to plant a quick kiss on the tip of his long nose. He smiled slightly but said nothing.

“That was horrible, I -”

“Attempting to retreat are we?” he asked, spinning her once before setting her down.

“On my poor attempt at innuendo.”

“Should that suggest the offer is no longer open?”

“No, no I -” she smiled. She stammered. She struggled. She surrendered as his lips moved to concur hers. The world stopped as their tongues entangled, as she felt his fingers force their way under her skirt, tracing the line of her lacy thong. She tried to stifle her moans by burying her face against his chest as once again she felt herself pressed between him and the cold, mirrored outer wall of an Upper East Side high-rise, imagining foreign dignitaries choking on their gin in a hotel lobby as they glimpsed New York dry – sex and smog and sirens.

Sirens.

Sirens.

“Shit,” she heard her lover say over the otherwise deafening droll of a squad car turning the corner. He pulled his hand back, wringing to rid it of her secretion. “I live here,” John clarified as Mary’s head turned, eyes squinted as she tried to make out the figures she imagined crying over the short civil disobedience which she had fantasized about turning to scandal moments before. “No one is home at this hour. No one saw. And if they did, so much the better for our alibi,” he briskly continued.

“Is that all I am to you? An alibi?” Mary asked.

John declined to answer as his eyes followed an ambulance around the corner. The ringing stopped – the street resumed its normal hectic hum, but John Graves Simcoe seemed to hear in it a battle cry.

Mentally he packed a musket. “Go back to work, Mary,” he said, abandoning inflection. “Go back to normal however it is that you want it defined. We ought not to have come this way. We ought not to have – you’re married - I’m –”

“Stop,” she pleaded, grabbing at the lapels of his suit - both in an effort to keep him from making an ill-advised charge to the front and to keep him from stepping back from the cliff on which they found themselves, leaving her alone to face the fall.

“I want you,” she choked, afraid of the words she longed to say, afraid of the implication, the consequence, and the man to whom she spoke them. Afraid of his reaction, rejection, reprisal. John could shift in an instant from willing to warlike. Mary had yet to define for herself which side of him she found more enticing. When he touched her, his hands felt colder than they had moments before.

“And what I want for you I fear I am not presently equipped to provide,” he said, taking her face in his hands as he spoke in is manic, effeminate manner, “what is it that you see in me? You and I met by hiding – and losing – a corpse. I told you not an hour ago that I –that Hewlett. That Hewlett …” he trailed off. Swallowed. Removed his hands from her cheeks and put them rigidly at his sides. Shaking his head of whatever regret filled it, he shifted, his murmurs momentarily taking a different tone. “Bloody Hewlett,” he moaned. “Naturally his final act of retribution would be to cock-block me once more for the sake of old time.”

John allowed himself time to properly broad over the consequences of his actions before turning his attention once more to the commotion at the corner. People were stopping to gape at a calamity city dwellers were normally keen to ignore.

Mary paused to consider how _‘bloody’_ Hewlett might actually be.

The memory of Arnold hitting her bumper of the car she was driving two nights ago resurfaced.

She recalled the fear she felt with John in the motel room when they witnessed their victim’s face projected on every international new network she could name. She recalled the fear she felt in the woods, the shame at being faced with her co-conspirator’s humanity, the comfort she took in his arms as she wept in the bleach-drenched bathroom.

“John, it doesn’t have to be that way -” she started as she threw her arms around his waist. He argued, but let Mary’s limbs linger with the rest of her lascivious offerings he did not seem to trust himself to accept.

“It does. Mary, I don’t know what I’ve done that convinces you I warrant your sympathy or affection. I wish I could tell you something that might explain if not excuse my recent behaviour but in truth, I don’t entirely understand my own actions though circumstance necessitated them,” he rattled. “Twenty years of court-ordered therapy have done little to curb my unrest but I - I know. I know I could have stopped before the point of no return. I could have but I didn’t and I _hate_ that I don’t know why. It is all quite acerb, my doctor told me on Tuesday morning – pissed drunk, as per his usual – that Hewlett was one of the few people in my life for whom fear was not the sole driver of his friendship. But he ought to have been afraid of me. _You_ ought to be afraid of me, Mary Woodhull … weary, at a minimum,” he paused in self-pity, again averting his attention back to the commotion at the end of the block. “Everyone else is. Though I suppose it is not difficult for one to see why.”

Mary retracted her arms so that she might cross them in indication to her almost-lover that the only force he had to contend with at present was standing directly before him.

“You offer me protection, assistance, affection, validation. No one else ever has. Ever, John. Let me do the same for you. Come back to my office with me. We will hide out there. Wait until this dies down. You can’t do anything to help the situation and if you charge into your flat now, angry that your mate rang the police when he swore he’d let it go -”

“You don’t know Hewlett the way I do,” Simcoe spat back, matching her stance. “We’ve been here before. He and I. A few times at that. For all of his indecision, the lad knows what he is about. He wouldn’t simply betray a cause he finds some identification in. Not unless his life or liberty were truly at risk, and even then I suspect him far too torn to act. Maybe he -”

“We will wait to see what happens. Out here,” Mary said, cutting him off before blind speculation could be allowed to dictate. “John, you’re quivering and I’ve seen how quickly that can take and ugly turn. Wait. There is nothing you can do for Edmund, but if you meant anything you said about protecting _me_ than please, please wait. I need you, too. And you John, you really need me.”

“As you wish,” he acquiesced with a sigh. He snatched the tote from the pavement and the pair made their way cautiously to the corner of the building to take a better assessment. Three squad cars were parked alongside the ambulance in the fire lane, tourists and teenagers were snapping photographs with their smart phones. For all of the commotion Mary could barely make scene of the scene.

“What is all this?” she asked in astonishment.

“He said he wouldn’t call the cops,” John repeated flatly. “To be honest I’m surprised he even managed it. Maybe he didn’t; maybe he’s dead and the sirens we heard were a dirge.”

Maybe you’re right, Mary thought, recalling the fear she felt in the woods.

“Remember, we both thought we had killed Arnold,” Mary said, cautioning his expectations – perhaps his hopes.

John kept his eyes fixed on the row of emergency vehicles as he countered, “Benedict Arnold is an American war hero who carried his bellicosity to Capitol Hill. He can take a punch. Hewlett is a pallid, sickish, skinny book-nerd who has never been in a conflict he couldn’t buy his way out of. But now he is broke and very likely broken beyond repair.”

“He asked for this, offered -”

“You needn’t remind me,” John retorted. “You think it doesn’t injure me that even in defeat he deals me a moral blow? I could have stopped. I could have, but I didn’t. I punched him until he hit the floor. I kicked him after that. Until he stopped talking. And then he kept screaming and the sound! I wouldn’t be made to listen to that either. I grabbed him by the hair and shoved his repelling little face into the radiator. Just once. That was all it took. I heard cartilage crack against metal and bone. In an instant, there was blood everywhere. He’d lost consciousness. I’ve broken noses before, I’ve broken men before, but I’ve never seen anything like this. There was too much blood for what the occasion ought to have allowed. And then it hit me and I panicked, remembering that he takes Coumadin, as if there was any way I could have forgotten - even in a burst of anger - given our recent history.”

John turned to meet her gaze, the absence of expression made all the more haughty by the lightness with which he spoke. “This all started because eight weeks ago I didn’t think he deserved to die. I berated another of our friends to use his pharmaceutical connections to ensure that didn’t transpire. And now look at us. Look at this.”

“What is _Cou-ma-din?_ ”

 

* * *

 

_“Blood thinners, you’re on blood thinners for fuck’s sake!” Anna Strong shouted. “Edmund please, just let them examine you.”_

After a soul draining, sleepless night, she had awoken in her mother’s guest bedroom alone with her fears. Her fiancé had not returned from his midnight rendezvous nor had he rung. The only message she had in her inbox was from Jordan Akinbode, requesting her presence at Wachtell Lipton as he, evidently, needed supporting counsel for a class action suit he was set to bring to trial, and she, for the time being, needed a job. Something in it sounded suspicious, but the argument was solid and the interview was in an hour.

Anna pulled something from Chanel from the back of her mother’s closet, a relic of a little black dress that seemed office-appropriate and seemed like it would fit. Fifteen minutes of struggle suggested otherwise, but after enlisting the assistance of Spanx, control-top panty hose and her mother’s bewildered Polish cleaner, Anna Strong had – for a fleeting moment – felt like she had won a war in the form of a zipper. When she tried to breathe and the conflict began anew. The dress was set on mutual destruction. She would surely suffocate over the course of wearing it – that is, if the underwire from her old bra did not take her first - but these concerns had to be silenced. She had split ends and dark circles to contend with as well an address in another borough awaiting her grand entrance.

The blowout she had attempted to give herself the night before unable to stand its ground against the hellfire of humidity, Anna twisted her hair into a bun as she did nearly every morning, affixing bobby pins to the places where her thick, loose curls were keen to spring out without warning. A quick glance in the foyer’s full-length mirror informed Anna that she was just as delusional about her physical attributes as the woman she resembled and whose clothes she had costumed herself in. ‘ _Little wonder Edmund can’t maintain an erection_ ,’ she scoffed, again marking his absence.

He still had yet to ring.

He would not until she found herself in Jordan Akinbode’s office, shifting nervously a chair at his desk waiting for him to speak as the call went to voice mail.

 _“Why don’t you sit on the couch,”_ her would-be employer offered.

_“The couch?”_

Jordan gestured.

 _“Is it comfortable?”_ he asked after another minute had passed.

Anna was not comfortable at all. When she told him so he offered her a salary of sixty-thousand plus benefits without a single follow up question. _“I really hate that couch,”_ he related after she accepted his offer. Something in it sounded suspicious, but the argument about the sofa was solid. He told her he would swing by Whitehall that evening with the case files which she would need to spend the weekend reviewing. He needed her in Albany Monday morning ready for a siege.

Anna wondered if her new found employment had been arranged by Inspector Tallmadge, who stood next to Jordan in a high school basketball team photo on his desk; by her mother, who spent the better part of the night before telling her to forget the tavern and move forward with her life and may have offered the man who had filed a class action against the city a deal for playing a part; or by Jordan’s girlfriend Abigail, who had been singing the same chorus to her for years.

Anna Strong felt her spirit wane.

Edmund Hewlett did nothing to quell her doubts.

 _“I have big news!”_ Anna announced to her fiancé over the phone, sitting on a park bench changing from heels into Chucks.

 _“Ah, concerning Akinbode?”_ Edmund enquired.

_“Wait, you set this up?”_

_“No, no, no. It was, that is, Akinbode swung round this morning and mentioned that he had a position open and planned on giving you a ring. It is wonderful news Anna, that is, ah … if it is what you want.”_

What I want, Anna thought.

Perhaps it was just his pace of speech, but something in the statement shook her.

Anna did not know if he had meant it as a question - if the past forty-eight hours called everything for question for him as it did for her. She considered her answer.

At the time, all Anna had wanted was to get out of these borrowed clothes, order take-out and watch reruns Sports Center while catching up on what her new workload might entail. She wanted to cuddle up next to her almost-lover, occasionally asking to borrow his calculator to check figures, exchange a kiss or respond to the broadcast - arguing over the commentators about what constituted a foul with a man from an island that clearly did not understand sport as a whole.

She had wanted to accept that she could not alone control what the future had in store. She had wanted her fiancé to call a ceasefire to his personal battel with reality. He tried to assure her in frantic bouts followed by long pauses over her three-block walk to his mate’s flat that he now had their financial situation under control.

Without asking her to stay with him in Setauket.

Without encouraging her to cease the chance at hand.

Choking out a promise that she was on her way up, she disconnected the call – wishing she could just as easily disconnect from the cruel reality that faced her. Anna loved the law as much as anyone who’s husband-to-be was under wrongful suspicion of abduction and murder possibly could. She had been an exceptional student; she had no doubt that she would prove an exceptional solicitor as well if that were what was required. Her goals had not changed over the course of a short, strange conversation with a friend from university; Anna had hoped her desire to see them realized to sustain her though late nights and long distance on its own.

She was not getting any support from her partner.

She had wanted Edmund to continue to share in her secret dreams. She had wanted Edmund to believe in her as much as he had a morning past.

More than anything, however, she wanted to believe in herself as she once had.

Anna glanced at herself in the mirrored glass the covered Simcoe’s building. The reflection, or rather, the recognition caused her to feel ill. She looked in that moment something like the woman she had long tried to be. Sleek, slender, slouched over just slightly enough that her height did not signal her. She straightened her posture briefly, surrendered to the piercing underwire and to the self-doubt of youth.

She was as tall as most men she knew; she was soft curves covering a strong, sturdy frame. She remembered counting carbs and calories in college, the hair colour appointments, cosmetics, exercise regiments and every additional form of sacrifice and self-deprivation in which she participated to better resemble her physically perfect roommate. She remembered Tuesday’s dread upon discovering that Mary Grant was now Mary Woodhull. Her childhood sweetheart had ultimately chosen a petit, wisp of a woman over her, exactly as she had always expected he would. She remembered Wednesday morning, staring at herself for the first time since Edmund painfully explained that he was unable to love her physically, fretting that it was her body, rather than his, that was in the way.

The corseted creature staring back at her with her own wide eyes looked as much like Mary Grant – now Mary Woodhull – as any real girl could ever hope to. Anna felt hideous.

On Monday she had imagined herself gorgeous; on Thursday, she realised that she had been.

She untied her hair; let the breeze sing through it before gathering it again into a loose bun. Messy. Lazy. Hers.

She smiled.

In the lift, she imagined stripping out of the Chanel to her almost-lover’s somewhat hesitant caress. She imagined things eventually returning to the way they had been before learning that Benedict Arnold had last been seen in DeJong’s Tavern after hanging up her business garments for good. She imagined Edmund, their future wedding, the life he pretended to leave for the love he perhaps had. She imagined the sort of life she hoped they might one day lead together.

It was then she realised that her aspirations were antithetical to much of what Edmund offered.

After knocking twice, Anna played with the signet ring she wore on a necklace.

She wanted Edmund.

She wanted Edmund to want what and as she did.

Thirty minutes later, however, the only thing Anna Strong desired was for the man she loved – the man who swore before God and his might and righteous vengeance (in the form of New York’s finest) that he loved her as well – to grant her enough respect to recognize the validity of her more immediate, concrete concerns.

She wanted him to file a police report.

She wanted him to go to hospital.

She wanted him to redirect his quiet rage from Tallmadge to her. It has been she who suggested the strategy that saw his perfect face pummelled into a canvas of blood and bruises. He was not angry with Simcoe, or so he kept insisting. She wanted to understand why.

She wanted him to say something to the paramedic in response to the concerns he, Anna, and the six police officers present shared – something, that was, besides -

“I’m certain it is not serious.”

Anna Strong wanted to scream.

“Edmund!”

He gave her a pitied gaze. She turned away, unable to look at the battle scars wrought by her underestimation of Simcoe’s infatuation and aggression. Anna looked up, willing the tears in her eyes to evaporate before they again be permitted to pool.

“Love I … ah, well you see, there is the matter of health coverage. At the moment, that is I haven’t any -” Edmund stammered. “and I fear that anything the good paramedic might pronounce could prove … rather expensive.” Anna bit her lower lip, remembering what she had overheard Edmund explain to her mother. He let his siblings believe that their trust funds had been partially depleted to cover his extensive medical and rehabilitative costs rather than allow his father to face the shame of fraud and failure in their eyes.

She wondered if there was a part of him that believed the lie he himself had constructed. She looked to the medic for help.

“Alright sir, I’m just go’need you to sign this waver,” the emergency medical technician answered in a deep, throaty sigh. He met Anna’s confused stare with the tired eyes of having already worked an eighteen-hour shift as she began to chastise him for betraying the Hippocratic Oath.

“I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick,” he recited, taking the pen and clipboard back form a man he knew to be an illegal immigrant surrounded by law enforcement who understandably did not wish to add bankruptcy to what the paramedic himself suspected must be a considerable collection of concerns. “You’d be surprised how often this happens, Ma’am.”

“I’m appalled,” Anna spat, bitter in her defeat. She glanced at Edmund as she spoke. When he offered her a weak smile in concession, she had half a mind to step in where John Graves Simcoe had surrendered to conscious. Her fiancé must have read the promised death in her stare, retreating a half step before darling to open his swollen lips.

“Ah, my dear -”

“Mr. Hewlett,” Tallmadge interrupted, “You are aware that under the Affordable Care Act it is illegal to be uninsured in the State of New York.”

Anna smiled at him, surprised to find an unlikely ally, surprised to find the law on her side.

“Ah – yes officer, you see the matter -”

“It is Detective Inspector,” Tallmadge glared.

“Yes, yes, quite right, DI … Tallmadge,” Edmund responded with practiced disinterest designed to degrade.  “I do … have coverage, that is to say, I will come Monday once I fill out the required documentation with Human Resources when I begin my new job. As per the legislation you yourself just sighted, my coverage will retro date to the first of March. If need be,” he said to Anna, “I will seek medical attention the moment I know the billing address for the claim.”

“Not if you are dead,” she replied flatly.

“Oh Anna. Now, now,” he said. She could not tell if he meant to sound dismissive or soothing. He tried to put an arm around her; she stepped away.

“You have a valid work permit?” Yilmaz asked sceptically.

“Until the first of August,” Edmund answered.

“Mr. Hewlett, I want to advise you that come Monday the insurance vendor might deny the claim if you fail to file a police report,” Tallmadge said.

“I have no intention to take John to court of this little bout of nonsense. Lads fight, Inspector. No need to waste police time and in turn tax revenue dragging it out, would you disagree?”

“Regardless if you refuse to press charges or not there are other ways in which allowing me to do my job would play to your benefit, Mr. Hewlett.”

“Ah yes … your job. Tell me Inspector, is the NYPD so understaffed that their star detective should be made to respond to such a minor incident?” Edmund mocked.

“You know well why I am here. Mr. Hewlett,” the inspector warned. “You may be many things, but ignorant is not among them.”

“Though stupid might be,” his sergeant muttered, winning her a reluctant smile from Anna and a side glare from her boss.

“What I am saying sir, is simply signing the report verifying that your injuries were sustained in a drunken altercation with John Graves Simcoe -” Tallmadge started again.

“I have the right to refuse.”

“On what ground would you?”

“My sentiment exactly,” Anna whispered, nudging Edmund lightly. He winced at her touch.

“Sir -” Tallmadge began.

“I’m alright, I assure you,” Edmund cut him off in the same patronizing tone.

Yilmaz threw up her arms. “We’re not getting anywhere,” she declared, signalling for uniform to leave the scene. “If you change your mind, Mr. Hewlett, you have up to two years to file a report, though let me be clear, the longer you wait the more difficult of a time you are bound to have proving that you were under duress preventing you from doing so sooner. You have my number?”

 

* * *

 

“Yilmaz, that was not your call to make,” Ben said from the passenger seat in her squad car, noting the irony in that he was forced to remind her of the small fact that she had been passed over for promotion due to office politics. Four years prior, it seemed something Hatice Yilmaz would never forget. She had been – and remained, to Ben’s ire – the more experienced detective of the two of them. When this argument proved unmoving to the newly elected District Attorney years earlier, Yilmaz had weaponized a faith Ben had never known her to actively practice. As punishment for her protest (which had led to the formation of Muslim Officer’s Union that no one – especially the Human Resources division – had wanted) the still-sergeant found herself assigned to his unit. Ben had implored his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for deliverance from the decisions that he had no hand in making. He often still did.

“Guess what Boss, wasn’t yours either. Your little frog prince up there was completely within his rights.” Yilmaz hissed as she ignited the engine. “You know what your problem is? You don’t have any friends, Ben,” she said as though he needed a reminder. “Hewlett and Simcoe have every reason to hate one another. And they probably do, you might _really_ be on to something there. But that line of inquiry is not going to lead to anything that will crack this case. Find out why they love each other instead. There is your motive.”

“They don’t,” Ben dismissed her. The vehicle jolted between drive and reverse as his subordinate attempted to escape sideway parking.

“Maybe not in the way the Bible teaches,” she said as she honked at oncoming traffic.

“What are you suggesting?”

Yilmaz stopped, put the car into neutral and turned to meet his gaze.

“They are guests in this country, these primary suspects of yours. They have different values and moral standards that you may hope to recognize but that you’ll never truly understand. You need to try, Ben. Especially with Hewlett, you need to try. Hate is universal. Love is specific. I’ve been a cop for over a decade, and I still think that love - or rather the fucking awful forms in which it presents itself - is the incitement behind most crime.”

Ben considered this fleetingly.

“So you buy Anna’s explanation that the fight was over her?” he asked.

“Not for a minute.”

“Then?”

“Unlike you, I was uniform when I started. One of my first calls when I was fresh from the academy was to the apartment of a family friend. I grew up with the daughter - beaten beyond fucking recognition after her brother discovered that she was in a relationship that their parents couldn’t approve of. I think it later came out that he had acted on his mother’s orders. Doesn’t matter. Shit like this happens all the time in South Paterson. What does matter is the brother was realised from police custody after charges were dropped. The girl survived, eventually married a man her parents picked out from the homeland and bore him three sons in as many years. Good for her, I guess.  Still fucking close to her brother, too. And to her parents who commissioned the whole thing. It is bullshit, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed.

Yilmaz did not seem to hear him, continuing without pause. “But you know what? I am jealous as all fuck. Not for the reasons you’d recognize, but because her family _loved_ her enough that they were willing to potentially sacrifice their liberty to spare her from an embarrassment of her own making.”

“That’s -”

“Baba knows about me and Braxton,” Yilmaz confessed. “I can sleep in my bed at night knowing he would never move to end the affair, but you know? Sometimes I lie there with my eyes wet and open wondering what I ever did to warrant such scorn. _Love_ isn’t the same for everyone, that is what I am getting at. Figure out what it is for Edmund Hewlett if you want to implement him so badly.”

As much as he suddenly felt for her, he felt she was fundamentally mistaken.

“But the _law_ , the law is the same for everyone in America, regardless of colour, creed, gender, national origin -”

“But we don’t live in the same county! None of us. Not you, not me, not Hewlett or Simcoe or Arnold or to bring this round to someone you actually care about, not Thomas fucking Jefferson.”

Ben sighed, wondering if his indignation over the reassignment was apparent in his exhaustion to everyone who working under him, wondering if it was beginning to effect his work on a whole.

“You know I can’t even get into the case files that I myself put together?”

“Seriously? Did you not get Brax’s text? The case is yours again if you want it.”

Ben had forgotten about the images he had been sent while on the phone with Scotland Yard. He pulled out his phone, “We have to solve this one first,” he said, embittered, waiting for the messaging app to pull up.

“Honestly how did you ever make Inspector?”

“Yilmaz,” he cautioned.

She was silent for a moment as he looked at the images he had been sent of the invoice on Martha Dandridge’s desk.

“Can you drive any faster? I need to get back to headquarters. Immediately if not sooner.”

Yilmaz gave him a cheeky half smile.

“You know when I decided I wanted a career in law enforcement?” she asked as she turned the siren on, ignoring dispatch when they phoned to ask what the emergency was.

“When?” Ben inquired.

“After Nine-Eleven.”

It was not what he expected.

“At the mosque on Friday we were told to go up to every man and woman we saw in uniform and that them for their service. I don’t know if I ever believed in Allah the way I was instructed to but I sure as hell believe in America. And do you think that anyone has ever come up to me and said _‘Thank you for your service to this beautiful country of ours?_ ’ No. I’m spat at and my credentials are called into question by everyone I meet. I still love my country and what it represents.”

“Maybe no one thanks you because you don’t push for battery charges. I needed a reason to arrest Simcoe. To formally arrest him and you blew it,” he answered as they pulled into the car park at 1PP.

“Aha! I knew it! I knew I could get you to admit it!” she laughed. “So _Simcoe_ is the target of your inquiry. At what point were you planning on telling the team? Ben, we can’t support you if you -”

“Simcoe can’t know. And neither can any of his cohorts until we establish motive.”

“It is obvious isn’t it?”

He stared at her hard. “I don’t think you know what love is.”

“I don’t think your one to judge. Had my ass cheeks spread wide open in evidence this morning; when is the last time you did the same?”

“I didn’t need to know that and I resent the allegation.”

“I could have meant a girl,” she winked. “Let me and Russo switch. Let me handle Simcoe, if he is unhinged enough to bully his mate I am sure he will do something to give us grounds to bring him in. I could sort him in five minutes.”

“We are on the same page there, but Russo is training Sanchez; let’s let them have the easy victory. I need you to work on Ferguson, get me everything you can on the Hewletts.”

They shared a brief smile.

What he decline to add was that Russo was training Sanchez to replace her. Ben had recently written an evaluation recommending promotion. What he declined to add was _‘thank you for serving this beautiful country of ours.’_ He did not know at the time of writing the recommendation that he had signed a death warrant. He would not get a chance to express any patriotic gratitude before her closed-casket funeral.

And Yilmaz - owing to her other virtues - would not provide him with one.

“Always the hardest assignments,” she complained. “Is it because I am the only one who figured out that you’re gay?”

“It is because you are the only one who doesn’t give a damn about being written up for insubordination,” Ben said as he slammed the passenger door.

 

* * *

 

They had been fighting for the past hour, which was to say, Anna had been – Edmund, for his part refused to engage. Her ammunition was rapidly depleting, he had yet to fire a single shot.

And yet he had won the battle.

And so he had lost the war.

Anna Strong fidgeted with the clasp on the necklace holding her engagement ring close to her heart.

“I can’t do this Edmund,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Ah, Anna -” he started. His lip was swollen, his front tooth chipped. “Can I be of any assistance?”

“Here.”

His hand caressed her shrunken waste as he spun her around. Anna shivered as he ran his fingers through her messy hair, lifting it off the back of her neck. She closed her eyes. He ignored the clasp with which she had been struggling, electing instead the zipper of her high-cut designer dress. She forgot her fury in his embrace. Anna held her breath. Edmund kissed her softly down her spine as it slowly presented itself to him. When the fabric snagged on her bra he pulled her body closer to his, pressing her breasts for give, electing to continue squeeze and stroke and whisper honeyed words after he had gotten over his obstacle. Anna heard him take short, sharp inhale as she rested her head back on his shoulder. Her soft hums gave way to a small shriek as the underwire took sharp aim at her heart. She explained, willing him to ignore it. He apologised while helping to free her from her undergarments the dress that covered them entirely.

“How can you be sorry for causing me discomfort? Look what I’ve done to you,” she said, afraid to turn around and do just that. Afraid to see his face.

She feared ruining the fantasy, waking up from the dream of the man who read poetry to her in dead languages and who stopped midway through to explain the finer points of Latin grammar; who laughed at her bad jokes and fixed broken things. The man who looked at the stars and dared her to look as well, who brought them even closer when she confessed she was afraid to climb on the tavern’s the roof. Edmund Hewlett had explained myths when she tired of maths, comparing her beauty to the goddesses and nymphs immortalized in the night sky. She had been afraid to love him then.

She had been afraid to be happy. She had been afraid of building happiness on what they both acknowledged to be a lie.

“None of this is of your making Anna. None of it.”

Lies, she saw now, were all they would ever have.

“I told you to make it look as though you were fighting over me. Me. And you – oh God, Edmund. What have I done? I can’t even look at you,” she said as saline dampened her cheeks.

“Then don’t,” he replied softly, wiping her tears, covering her eyes as he leaned over to kiss her.

Anna could taste the iron when their lips met. The paramedic estimated that he had lost a pint of blood. Not life threatening, she repeated to herself. Not life threatening. She pulled back, looking at the side his battered face. It had always been something of a mystery, a kaleidoscope, constantly changing, rotating, revealing. It was as though she never saw the same visage twice. She saw twenty in the span of a two-minute conversation. She would have given anything to see something even faintly recognisable once more.

Anna stepped away and spun around, brushing the hair she loved to tussle into the school-boy style that – even with its loss of pigment – made him look impossibly too young for her. There was a cut on his forehead as there was on his lip; the circles under his blood-flushed eyes were stained with saffron and indigo, his nose swollen and kinked.

“How could he – how could he -” she began to stammer again.

“It is not much of a stretch, physically speaking. Simcoe has a good ten inches on me and -” he laughed. He coughed. He winced.

“Oh God, Edmund, what happened?” Anna asked as she began to unbutton his shirt, seeing signs of strangulating and countless other contusions as she removed the blood-stained garment.   

“I’m alright love, it is just cosmetic,” he replied. Dismissively. As he had to each and every one of her inquiries that afternoon.

Danger, Anna decided, was only attractive in the abstract.

“You’re not. Edmund, _I’m not_. Can’t you see that?”

“Love … Your plan – rather that is to say – the course of action that you suggested that served to inspire the route I took, it is working, Anna. Don’t you see? A few days from now we will all be able to forget this whole awful business with Senator Arnold. In a few weeks’ time we will have nothing to worry us at all. I promise you that -”

“I can’t. Edmund. I can’t. I can’t and I won’t. This was a mistake. Nothing you hope to offer is worth the risk of losing you.”

“You won’t. Darling, you won’t. I’m here.”

He wasn’t. That much had always been plain.

He was lost in some delusion of what it might take to make her fall in love.

Anna feared him, feared for him, feared losing him to an ugly ideal.

“I already have lost you! Jesus fucking Christ, look at yourself! You are not the man I fell in love with. And I … I am the one to blame. I knew. I knew from the beginning that I could never,” she unclenched the clasp on her necklace, catching the ring before it fell. “I should have never tried to alter the terms of our agreement. I should have never agreed to take part in your Green Card scheme in the first place. I love you. I loved you from the start.”

He pulled her against him. She mustered her reluctance but it proved a poor defence against the feeling of his bare torso against her own. She cried again into his shoulder, hating the people they seemed to reveal in each other. Hating his darkness, hating that he seemed so willing to accept hers.

“I love you, too,” he whispered. “I am certain that I have for far, far longer than I dared to let on, even to myself. Anna, I know I’m not – that is, much experienced with romance or with women or relationships in general, but believe me when I say with all sincerity that I would do anything to add to your happiness, and with all humility that I won’t always get it right. But I’m trying, Love. I adore you and I would do most anything to assure you of that.”

“Is this how your love manifests itself, Edmund? You have so many high-minded notions that you can illustrate so beautifully with words but they might all have been better written in a long-forgotten romance novel from centuries past. You claim your intentions are born form respect, but it seems you haven’t the remotest understanding of that abstract. Respect would be hearing my pleas when I begged you to let the paramedic run a series of tests. Respect would be staying by my side, holding me last night when I begged you not to go to your business meeting. I don’t need you to buy my dreams for me. All I wanted – I’ll repeat, _all_ I wanted was for you to apply for a line of credit with me. With me, Edmund. Not behind my back. And sure as all fuck not in a way that got you arrested for suspicion of murder and involves single-handedly slugging it out with a number of different banking institutions and agencies of espionage. Not in a way that involved asking John Graves Simcoe to actually pummel you to service an alibi!”

“Anna please, you don’t understand.”

She waited. No further explanation was offered. She tore herself from his grasp and turned away.

“And whose fault might that be?” she asked, picking her mother’s vintage dress off the floor. “You may well be an honest man but God damn I have never met anyone more vague. I can’t believe, I still can’t fucking believe that you never thought to mention anything about your youth to me, though you had no issue whatsoever over being open about your parentage with my mother. Why can’t you talk to me?” she pleaded. “Why won’t you?”

Edmund nodded and began to pace. Anna was nearly fully dressed again before he elected to speak. His voice was steady, practiced control over the pain his own admissions cased him.

“I don’t talk about home often because I fear I don’t have one to return to. I fear I never had one to begin with. I would rather have died in New York than gone back to life in Scotland. My father has barely been able to look at me since the stroke. My mother, her interest in parenting only began to manifest itself when I was bedridden and unable to protest. I suffer the resentment of the rest of the family and all who know us as a result. And I’m sorry - I truly am - if anything I told your mother in duress last night lead you to believe that by virtue of my blood line I ought to naturally possess some unobtainable standard of nobility which you’d clearly require of me regardless of my present means, which, mind – I have always been upfront about. Always.”

There it was. Anna swallowed. He resented her greed as much as she resented it in herself.

“I don’t talk about my past because it would only serve to further your disappointment and my shame,” he said.

“I’m not-” she started. Stopped. He had never lied to her directly. She could not continue to lie to him.

“And you’re right, Anna. You’re right. I am a victim to my own authoritative tendencies and though it was not my intention, my instinct was to do everything within my ability to seize as much control of the situation we woke up to yesterday morning as I could. And that is how my love manifests itself. I know you don’t believe me, I know it may not seem like it, but everything I have done or dared has been for you and you alone.”

“And that is what I can’t take. DeJong’s should not be the hill you die on. My dream of owning the bar I mange –managed - doesn’t have to happen right away. I thought it did. I was wrong. Nothing is worth the expense of your liberty and safety. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve changed a lot. I don’t want your money, Edmund. I don’t want to want it. This – it, it is over. It has to be. I don’t like the person you make me and I hate the person I’ve made you.”

“You … you can’t mean that.”

She could not lie to him.

“You struggle to believe it, I know you do, but you have nothing you need to compensate for. Nothing. You don’t need to compensate me for loving you, and I should not be made to pay a price for that privilege. Furthermore, I can fight my own battels; if you respect me as you claim to, you’ll respect that. I got the job working for Jordan. Maybe I’ll work at the law firm for two years while I save up enough money to pay back my student debt and you establish a line of credit. Maybe it will be five. Maybe things won’t work out according to plan at all and you know what, that is fine. Because I know that you believe in dreams. And me. And Edmund, my love, I believe in you. And that is enough. For me, it could be enough.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I do. But I don’t wish to marry you, Edmund.” She fidgeted with the ring she held in her hand, “Not under whatever pretence we have arranged that makes you think that my love to you is tied to some idea wealth or class or legal status or whatever it is driving you to neurosis.”

She walked over and kissed him. He did not return it.

“Anna-”

“Edmund. I’m not going to take a knee and I don’t wish you to either. I don’t want ten thousand dollars. I don’t want half a million. I don’t want to be put on a pedestal while simultaneously being patronized. I want to be your partner. I want to be level with you as I ask plainly, will you be mine?”

He clenched his jaw. Swallowed. Then spoke.

“There are some things that you’d really ought to know.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... that seems like a good place to cut off. 
> 
> South Paterson is an area of NYC also known as Little Istanbul, the largest Turkish-American immigrant community in the United States. Stories like the one Yilmaz told happen in Little Istanbuls everywhere.
> 
> I have no further contextual notes for you this week, so lovely faces, it seems this is where I bid you farewell until academia allows (or demands) me to post the rest of this conversation (and the fifty-thousand to follow it.) I will get back to burdening you with more plot soon. 
> 
> Comments and Kudos and the things writers typically say about them, thanks for reading, XOXO - Tav.
> 
> Up Next: Dirty Laundry


	22. The Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna does laundry, Hewlett and Simcoe air theirs … and then Hewlett does _it_ on the washer, and just about everywhere else in Simcoe's flat.  
>  _Ayyyy boy! Get you some!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter!
> 
> I know it has been a while, sorry about that. Our last chapter ended with Anna Strong asking Edmund Hewlett what should have been a simple yes or no question. In this chapter, he takes his sweet time answering. Hew does have a way of complicating things … and I am not going to front, I don’t know that I managed to make him seem sympathetic enough on the whole this go around. He mentioned a few chapters back - lord help me, it has been so long that even I can’t remember when – that there was something tragic in that he and Simcoe knew other as adults. This update may offer an amendment, or at least some further insight to that observation.
> 
> That aside, this is a fairly heavy chapter. Should we do the thing? Oh, oh yes, we should.
> 
> Warnings: **explicit sexual content** , childhood trauma / traumatized children, abandonment, politicised and casual racism, human and drug trafficking, guilt, speech impediments, illness, immigration … and length. This update weighs in at just under 20K words and I am so sorry. I have no one to blame but myself.
> 
> That said, shall we?

Anna Strong was livid.

At her almost-love.

At his abuser.

At herself.

She continued to scrub at the silken shirt’s bloodstains against her former fiancé’s objections to her ‘ _assaulting a high-thread count silk blend with an acid and base simultaneously’_ from his perch on the toilet beside her in the flat’s small washroom. From his new throne. The only one, to Anna’s mind, of which he might now be considered worthy. She barked back at him in a moment of pause, as she pulled her unzipped dress back over her shoulders, that he was fortunate the hydrogen peroxide he was convinced would damage his fine clothing was no longer being used to treat the wounds to his face.

In this, it seemed, the two were in agreement.

In might well have been the only matter on which that could be said on this particular Thursday afternoon in early March. Edmund made another quip about the pain she had put him through in building a stint for his nose being worse than the punch itself. Again, Anna did not laugh, feeling that she herself had been made the punchline of a particularly cruel joke. She glanced at the signet ring she had offered back to him, unceremoniously laid to rest with the question it contained on the bathroom counter amidst more product than Anna cared to number. For a fleeting moment, she considered the hair oils and pore cleansers belonged to Mary Woodhull; that even when it came to faking love, her once-friend had her at a loss.

“How long have they been pretending to fuck?” Anna asked.

“Who? Ah – Simcoe and Mrs. Woodhull? Few days. Since Tuesday if I am being made to guess. Why do you ask?”

Anna did not respond. Instead, she pushed the sign of her sham and shame behind a bottle of scented soap after deciding to employ its content in her sanguine struggle.

“Ah, you really ought not, that is, I’d much rather you didn’t -” Edmund began to inveigh on his shirt’s behalf.  

“Is that your answer then?” she barked, glancing between him and the place where she knew their ring to be.

“Um. Anna,” she heard Edmund swallow. “Love, you can’t possibly appreciate -”

“And who’s fault is that?” Anna spat. Her ex-fiancé looked down at the tiled floor.

There were few things that he could have said to her proposal to make her truly regret having given her heart and offered her hand. The manner in which he had responded, however, had done wonders to pull her out of the dream she had been in since he began to smile around her. The worries that had darkened the earliest days of their original agreement, the times when Anna felt herself falling for a man who seemed too interested and infatuated with his intellectual pursuits to pay her much mind, were returned with full force.

Anna adjusted her borrowed Chanel again, ignoring Edmund as he asked if she wanted help zipping it. She focused on the sound of the nailbrush scraping against his Armani; half hoping that Edmund’s shallow worries had warrant - that the material would unravel as easily as her expectations of him had.

She gazed at what she could make of her reflection in the mirror over the sink, hung too high for her to get a proper take of how red and raw she imagined her face as looking from the physical labour in which she was engrossed, from the tears she refused to let fall. She glanced over at Edmund on occasion. Sometimes he would offer a smile, a quip, a small remembrance of the man she had fallen in love with, of the man who might have one day loved her had she not impatiently, impulsively confessed her feelings to him nights ago in the same breath as a financial plea.

The latter, it seemed, was all he had heard.

In –or perhaps, Anna feared – _as_ his response to her proposal, Edmund had confessed that he had gambled their marriage away on the tavern using her love as collateral.

_“In order to ensure Simcoe’s investment, I agreed to the terms of his bet: if in twelve weeks the trust has seen a return sufficient to purchase the business, I will do so in my name, eliminating my need to wed myself for the sake of paperwork. You’d continue to manage it, we would –presumably – continue to date, and after my thesis I would sign it over to you. Should my ill-gotten market predictions not pan out, Simcoe will have the honour of purchasing DeJong’s for you. As of this morning it seems, however, that the former is the far more likely outcome of this little venture in which we find ourselves engaged.”_

_“Do you mean to keep true to your promise?”_ she had blinked, the words still setting.

_“I don’t know that I can. At the same time, it would be impossible for me not to.”_ A long pause had followed, owing nothing, it seemed, to Edmund’s otherwise dithered speech or indecision. _“If John can’t trust me at my word, we have a lot more at risk than simply … a marriage. Anna, truly this can wait, can it not? You don’t properly understand the situation we are in.”_

_“What about all the pretty promises you made to me?”_ she conjured.

_“Have I somehow failed you in those regards as well?”_ he sneered.

Anna had again apologised for the nudes she had sent the night before to another man, for the hurtful things she had said after their love failed to manifest into a physical expression. Edmund looked dejected, but assured her that his feelings for her had not fallen victim to base attacks. That he loved her for who she was, all that she was, despite all that she did.

Pretty words. Empty ones.

Her phone beeped again with a new text message to add to the thirteen she had received since hanging up on Dr Wakefield, who, for his part, seemed otherwise more concerned with a fictive E-Coli breakout in a private kindergarten than with assisting her in the task of tending to a man too stubborn to seek professional medical assistance. The good doctor had apologised over Skype when Anna first rang, saying that his office was simply too busy with panicked mothers reacting to a complaint Judge Woodhull had made against the institution to give her live video instruction in bandages and braces. She periodically received a text or two of instruction when Edmund’s teammate tired of his toddlers. This too managed to annoy her. She had long since finished playing physician and was keen to ignore the text - as she had the past seven - until seeing it was from Abe, something she announced to her ungrateful patient as his eyes followed hers to the device.

“What is it?” Hewlett asked. If he refused to elaborate on the struggles that defined his friendships, Anna reasoned, so too could she.   

“Take off your trousers,” she replied.

“Does this mean you forgive me?” he laughed.

“It means that there is a stain on your pant leg that needs removing.”

“Anna” he gasped. “These _must_ be dry cleaned.”

“It is not up for debate.”

“No, truly it is not,” he agreed, raising an index finger as though he meant to scold her. “I fear I must insist on this matter -”

“Edmund!” she shouted, not for the first time that afternoon and certainly not for the last.

“If you truly want to spend the evening assaulting textiles, there is a pillowcase that looks to suggest Simcoe had intended to smother me before deciding it better to simply throw a bag of frozen veg on my face,” he said bitterly as he stood, making his way to the only doorframe within the flat.

Only Edmund Hewlett could manage to speak in such a manner, annoyed by the nature of her distraction technique, disinterested in the attempt that had been made on his person that necessitated it.

“Simcoe tried to suffocate you?” Anna challenged, trying to regain control of her own volume. “I’m sorry – how can you, honestly, stand there and defend him -”

“How can I not?” Edmund gaped. “It is the least of what he is owed.”

Their eyes met without connecting. “While you are out there,” Anna quipped, “do me a favour and switch on Fox News. I’m sure they are still running round-the-clock Arnold coverage. I could do to hear one of his speeches on _‘how immigrants are ruining this beautiful country of ours’_ about now. For the first time I find myself in concurrence.”

“Yours. It is your country, Anna. Not mine.” Edmund removed his trousers and shoved them into her hands with a force she did not expect.

“What do you possibly have to gain out of covering for a man with no self-control?” she demanded as he again made a move to exit.

Edmund paused.

“Everything I do … everything I’ve done has been _solely_ for your benefit. How do you fail to see that?”

“I never asked you to let John actually injure you.”

“I had no choice,” he said. Through he did not face her; she could tell he spoke behind clenched teeth.

“Because of a _bet_?” she stressed. She hoped he would note her equalled aggravation and dismay.

“Because if I fail to I could go to prison for the rest of my life. We signed an ironclad contract, you can take a look, Akinbode wrote it up. The bet is not in its contents but, ah! Anna, Darling - it was needs must; otherwise, our little trading scheme might raise unwanted interest. If the coppers start – never mind. The point I’m rather struggling to make is that I can’t let Simcoe pay for my poor judgement. Not again.”

“You’re not making any sense. None of this makes any fucking sense! Edmund how long exactly do you plan to let John ruin you?”

He spun around on his heel, speaking quickly, his words almost indiscernible under the stress of a hardened accent. “Ruin me? Everything I am I owe to him in a roundabout way. You simply don’t understand.”

“Whose fault is that?” she asked again, adding in warning, “Don’t make me your enemy, Edmund.”

“I didn’t draw the lines.”

Anna tried to step back. Having little room to manoeuvre she tripped into the counter, scattering some of Simcoe’s shiny bottles with a thud. Edmund reached out to her as through he expected her to fall. When panic passed his hands remained, tension turning tender.

“Ah, Anna,” he sighed, sliding into a kiss. All Anna could taste was the bitter burn of disinfectant. She pushed him gently, gracing his broken lip. The swelling, she noted, had greatly reduced. The sting, it seemed, remained. 

“I know you think he is something of a brother to you,” Anna began. Edmund looked for a moment as though she had slapped him.

“A brother?” he scoffed as he realised her, took a step back and rubbed his temples. He paused for longer that he likely intended, his face twisting in anguish or disgust at Anna’s insinuation. He lowered his eyes as not to meet hers directly. “A second cousin, once removed, mum’s side, perhaps.”

Hearing his shame, she longed for his silence.

He spoke.

 

* * *

 

In 2002, Scotland was experiencing the renewed sense of nationalism born of devolution at the same time it was experiencing large-scale migration for the first time, due, Edmund reminded her, to a war an attack across the Atlantic began a year prior. A number of his father’s less profitable properties had been transformed into private refugee asylums and business flourished under the tax benefit this so-said charity allowed. Edmund’s personal investment in the new socio-political situation had been limited to echoes of the press: Holyrood’s policies were more welcoming than those of Westminster, the electorate itself more liberal, and so the experience and experiment with multi-culturalism would surely run far smoother than it had in the sixties in the south. He found himself in passive agreeance with the general assessment and gave it no further thought.

That was until disenchantment set in across a portion of the population he had little to do with.

That was until the press began reporting on incidences of civil disquiet.

When he enquired if there was anything to be made of the rumours he saw in the local papers in his weekly letters home, Edmund was either ignored or dismissed. When high-minded liberal publications, typically loyal to the Hewlett family whose wealth had been re-established in green energy - which their respective readership admired - began finding fault with his father’s estate housing, Edmund’s interest in the project waxed. He started actively seeking a broader reading of the public pulse. He found a critique in the very last place he would have expected.

The Daily Mail had, for the past few years, no reason to provide the public with anti – Hewlett sentiment. The rag’s then-editor had previously been given financial incentive in the form of stock options to leave the family to their own devices. This curtesy typically extended to their business ventures out of shared economic interest. However, shortly before the Easter holiday, the tabloid ran a particularly sensationalist cover story stating that conditions in one of their more notorious estates had made the city of Glasgow into a hotbed of racially provoked violent crime. It was the sort of thing that startled a boy who had been forced to spend far too much of his youth studying basic boardroom warfare. The editor, it seemed, simply had more to gain from slandering his good family name than he had to loose should stocks go down.

This alone had been reason enough for concern. Something had to be addressed. He had been keen to discover what.

 

* * *

 

At seventeen, Edmund Hewlett had no friends at school.

He held an arbitrary position of authority that did enough to conceal that sad truth and the social apprehension from which it stemmed. No one dared, out of fear of reaction or reverence for the curtesy royal title affixed to him name, to speak to him unless he opened the conversation, and on those seldom occasions, only in limited words certain not to challenge or offend. Having been raised with the same degree of deference, Edmund made nothing of it. It was therefor particularly startling to him when he asked York’s only boarder who might have been more social isolated than he himself was to act as a translator to be given the response –

_“It would be a waste.”_

The little boy’s pale eyes widened as he continued to speak softly in a voice that sounded as if it had barely been tested, _“I don’t speak Dari or Kurdish. I take it you’re under the assumption that language and culture in places whose names you can’t pronounce is homogenous? You would.”_

Edmund, taken aback by the acid in the response, stammered promises of the sorts of things he could offer which child might find of interest - horses and hunts, fast cars, blood sport.  Promises he had every intention to keep. The boy, Simcoe, who seemed to think him an absolute buffoon, eventually agreed to come along on a short trip to the second city of the empire.

On the train from York to Glasgow, he bought him a meat pie and as many sweets and the boy could stomach. Simcoe cocked his head to the side and mockingly told him it all tasted like shite. Edmund smiled in spite of himself and ordered a beer, which he let the little lad take a small taste from. He said he did not like it, but it seemed to quiet him enough.

They sat in relative silence for the remained of the journey, Simcoe occasionally smarting about something, Hewlett sipping lightly as he tried to feign interest. He ought to have attempted to savour the taste for it would prove the last time he would ever order himself ale. It was the last time his so-said arrogance would manifest itself free of effort or anger, the last time he would have any sort of a relationship with comfort or confidence whatsoever.

“I imagine the same is true for Simcoe,” he mused sadly.

“Simcoe is always arrogant,” Anna retorted.

“Thanks to me, Simcoe is always angry. That night broke us both.”

Anna bit her lip as she tried to listen without offering further contradiction or correction.

When the two arrived at the estate turned asylum, Edmund explained, he had, for the first time in his life, the feeling that he had somehow underprepared. The two were greeted at the door by a _‘did your father send you?_ ’ and ‘ _who might this be?_ ’ to which, Hewlett, confused by the Queen’s English, glanced at Simcoe, who, for his part, repeated the questions back to him in the language in which they had been spoken.

_“Yes, and ah – this is um -”_

_“I thought you Hewletts liked to keep it in the family,”_ the thin, bearded man who had greeted them responded with considerable offence.

_“Ah, we do, this is ah, William Gordon,”_ the heir presumptive invented on the spot. _“We’re second cousins, mums side. I thought I might need a translator. Ah, I see now that is hardly the case.”_

_“Billy,”_ the man started, continuing in what Hewlett assumed was Arabic. Simcoe answered, then turned to him and told him that the man wanted him to accompany his colleagues in the kitchen while the man had words with him in his bureau, adding once again that he did not know enough of the Afghan dialect to really be of much use.

In a bedroom being used in a back office, the man asked him if he was truly labouring under the perception that he did not know who John Graves Simcoe was - the news of the roadside bombing that had killed his father had made its way across the border to Afghanistan, after all. Did they, he questioned, not have news in Britain? Hewlett blinked. After asking if Simcoe would be safe, he, half-petrified, explained that it was because of Britain’s news that he was there.

In the conversation that followed, he learned that the street level conflict was corporate in nature. Namely, many the people the man trafficked into Glasgow happened to pay their fare in poppy, a market that had formerly been under control of the former soviets who had taken up residence in smaller numbers after the Iron Curtain fell.

_“Apologies to your father for what he considers bad publicity, but nothing does wonders to silence talk of the trade like a well-spoken, malnourished brown girl in a hajib calling a city that considers itself liberal ‘racist’,”_ he laughed.

Edmund shuttered.

He learned that his father not only knew what was being run through his charity but was profiting from it. Seeing no other option but to pretend to renegotiate a deal he had only just heard of in hopes of making it out alive and intact, he did his best to read the queues he was presented - occasionally fumbling words on intention. It seemed better to be perceived as incompetent than naïve, though the evening told him he had long been both.

Before an agreement could be reached, their conversation was interrupted by the sound of gunfire. The man, who would be dead before morning, demanded to know from Hewlett if he had been followed. Hewlett had no answer; he had not thought to look. He left the gun he had been offered on the plastic picnic table used as a desk and made his escape through the back.

Simcoe, for his part, had not been so fortunate.

Hewlett spent the rest of the night and the whole of the following day looking for him after police gave a statement saying that all of the victims of the drive-by had been asylum seekers.

When he bought a Guardian at the station two mornings later, returning to his home in defeat, the incident was cited as being racially provoked.

The business section, however, showed stock in his father’s enterprise had increased in its considerable value.

Edmund Hewlett felt ill.

Over Easter, he could not sleep.

Feelings of guilt, cowardice and bitter inadequacy were fuelled by his father’s rage over the incident. He told him that it was not only his fault that a little boy was missing, but that he was solely responsible for the deaths of half a dozen innocent people who had come to this land seeking a better future. He was -under no circumstances - to inform the authorities of anything he had seen or done that night. Should he fail to heed the advice, he would surely go to prison. His father promised him that he would not lift a hand in his assistance, claiming that he would happily testify at his trial should it come to one.

And so, he had done nothing.

He neither rang the police nor slept for a fortnight.

Anna Strong stared at the swollen bags under his empty eyes, questioning if he had ever truly slept since.

“You were a child, Edmund,” she said when he’d come to a pause. “You neither knew nor in any way intended-”

“If I had any remnants of my youth going into Glasgow with a shell-shocked child whom the year had made an orphan, I left them at the estate-cum-asylum. I was an adult when I returned to my family’s summer residence for Easter. I ought to have filed a report, regardless of personal consequence,” he chastised, again turning his back on her. Anna reached for his shoulder.

“I know how you think. You were protecting your family too, their business, those they employ.”

“It is not how I think,” he confessed. “It is how my father does.”

The two had never directly spoken of the event, Edmund informed her, though he was certain - especially after reading the first few chapters of Abigail’s online publication – that Simcoe had issues resulting from that night that he simply could not resolve without professional assistance and prescribed medication.

Neither, Anna noted, could he.

“I tell you that I could not sleep for half a month’s time,” he replied to her assessment. “I don’t know that Simcoe - for his part - has been able shut his eyes since. He was taken under the false name I had assigned him at random  and held for ransom. I don’t know exactly what he endured, but I know that he returned to school in worse state than he arrived. He had been traumatized by … by his experiences in Islamabad and then in London in short succession, to be certain, but –before, before Glasgow - he had not the behavioural issues that seem so ready to surface at the smallest slight. He was just a shit kid like any other.”

Anna nodded her forced sympathy. “What exactly did you say to him that set him off?” she inquired slowly.

“It was warranted, Anna. I just needed him to hit me. His knuckles were, ah – never, never mind that.” He shook his head in what she perceived as antipathy. “Simcoe did what I asked of him and he will assuredly be vilified for it; and I’ll spend a lifetime in silenced self-scrutiny. It is no use to apologise now, to try to justify it to John, who doesn’t hear me, or to you, who forgive me love, simply fail to comprehend.”

So he saw through her.

Anna narrowed her gaze. “You’re right. I never did understand what it is the two of you are trying to compensate for with your whole brutal take on ‘lad culture’. Isn’t that like middle class kids who speak as though they come from blue collar backgrounds and upload videos to YouTube about ordering fried chicken? I don’t get the appeal, in general, much less your particular interpretation, but Jesus Fucking Christ! Don’t you think it needs to end? You are adults now. John is apparently in therapy over it, why the fuck aren’t you? Insurance aside, I don’t deserve this, Edmund. I don’t deserve to bandage your wounds whenever you decide for whatever reason that your psychological scars had ought rather manifest themselves physically. And you know what? Neither does John.”

“I’m. You are right, on all counts you are absolutely right. It is not -”

“Why is this - whatever this is – so fucking important to you? Let’s just – why don’t you just call him, say you are sorry for whatever dickish thing you said even if you don’t mean it -”

“I do. I am sorry. I am so sorry for all of it. For then … for now,” he again began to berate.

“You shouldn’t be,” she said in a hard tone. “Grow up, Edmund. Life goes on. You are about to get your PhD in Astrophysics from an Ivy League University. John’s part of the Oxbridge elite and manages a bunch of hedge funds with great competence and success. The two of you are fine. You are just both too old to be playing war games against one another. Friends don’t -”

“I had a year left in York before I was meant to take my A-Levels, attend Oxford after serving my standard military duty,” he interrupted, still lost to memory. “I - ah, needless to say none of that transpired. Unable to shut my eyes, I stared looking through my old telescope at night. I decided just – just like that,” he snapped his fingers, “that I could not spend another year in York, could not return home and could not follow the path laid out for me. When Simcoe returned to school –alive, thanks be to God – and told the board of directors what I had done, I filed a counter-complaint against him, in hopes that he would be expelled and thusly safe from the sorts institutions like those tend to breed. Instead, he became the very archetype, following an example he thought I meant to leave him. I – for my part – I simply left. I sat my exams a year early and went to read astrophysics at St. Andrews, looking at the stars to provide a replacement structure for the one I’d thought myself to have known. Nearly two decades later and I am still looking,” he laughed to himself, echoing the sound’s irony by adding. “In New York, with Simcoe. Who now hates me not for who I am but for who I am not.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself Eddie,” Anna castigated, “I’m sure he hates who you are just as much as you seem to.” 

Edmund nodded his acceptance.

Anna stopped.

She could be so brash. So unkind. She was a disservice to herself and her cause.

She looked at the man who fought so gallantly for her dreams while crushing her hopes, feeling her again eyes fill with tears in regret at what she had just said.

His tragedy was he loved her.

Her tragedy was that his love was platonic at best – at worst, it was tied to the stronger love he reserved for his enemies.

His tragedy was that he could not distinguish between friend and foe.

And neither could she.

“Here it is flat, Love. That is not actually the worst of what I - or my family - put the poor lad through.”

 

* * *

 

It had cooled as soon as they arrived at her office where happy family portraits adorned her desk and walls.

He picked up the open-faced internal magazine by her computer, preferring its pictures of human suffering to those of her smiling in her husband’s arms. Mary herself seemed immune to the various images of Abe and the insidious looks they offered to John in the form of carefree grins. He felt her foot graze his leg in small attempt at seduction, causing him to fold it onto his lap.

She was happy before him.

She was happy without him.

If anything, he was in the way.

He sat in silence; surveying everything their fake affair threatened, everything that might be lost to her should he act on his feelings. He tried to ignore the divorce manuals in the tote he had carried in, the nineteenth century daydream of a novel and the erotica he had nearly enacted on the pavement below his flat and the corpse it contained – the second he had created in as many days.

He glanced at her. Stared.

He wanted to have her. He wanted to help her. He noted the contradiction in his thoughts.

Mary frowned at her computer. She called an intern to fetch her two espressos – no, not a duppio - two. Don’t they listen?

Simcoe smiled. She returned it. A girl blue hair and eyes enlarged by thick rimmed spectacles broke their extended gaze when came in with caffeine, asking timidly if there was anything else Mrs. Woodhull needed. Mary responded with the sort of forced kindness that cut like a knife that she had already tasked the unfortunate intern with recognisance that ought to have proven simple, asking through a pained grin if she might be able to explain why there was nothing new in her inbox which she could work from. The girl looked as though she might need a moment to cry on Tumblr over the interaction.

Simcoe fell all the more in love. For a moment, he let himself return to thoughts of her touch, of her cherry-flavoured lip balm that persisted though all the drink meant to rid him of her kiss.

It was no good, he realised.

At work she recalled the woman who told him to help her carry the senator they assumed dead into the dive-bar’s basement. The woman who then attacked the establishment with bleach when they came back to discover him missing, who made him feel both full and inadequate, who he longed to bring to laughter.

At work, Mary Woodhull was quite unhappy.

She would never, he thought, be happy with him.

John quietly consoled himself through text as Mary typed, reading first the article she had open about a girls’ school in Nigeria, then, by chance, another that pretended it was penned by an old acquaintance. This he stared at with particular interest and for a particularly long time. His eyes were still fixated on the same sport when a small woman in a power-suit came in without knocking.

 

* * *

 

“Imagine that … Ells getting me _out_ of trouble,” Simcoe smirked as soon as the door had shut, her boss back where she belonged on the other side of it.

“Sorry I put you on the spot like that, I saw you staring at the piece and I knew – or assumed rather – that you know enough about corporate finance to fake it.”

“Oh? I wasn’t. I know her well enough to know that she did not actually write this op-ed, factually correct though it may be,” he paused, appreciating the irony of the disconnection. “You … don’t?” he asked sceptically.

“No,” Mary rolled her eyes and curled her tongue playfully. “I somehow don’t warrant the attention of an extremely successful, insultingly young English philanthropist -”

Simcoe interrupted with a cold laugh. “Ellie Hewlett is a drug lord. And a … Scot. Let’s not praise her charitable works too highly.”

“Oh, I have no trouble believing that. Industry is full of it, keeps people like me in a job though,” Mary sighed, pointing to the title listed under her gold plated name shield.

“Deputy Head of Public Relations,” Simcoe read aloud.

“Like I keep telling you, I know how to clean up a mess.”

He could not tell if her statement and the smile that followed were ironic or sardonic. Mary returned her attention to her monitor.

“She is Edmund’s sister,” Simcoe remarked after a minute.

“No,” Mary elongated, her rapid-fire fingers freezing on the words they had been in the process of typing.

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m not being sarcastic. I don’t see a resemblance and Hewlett never once mentioned that he has a sibling who works in my field, as a cover or otherwise.” She paused. Typed. Reflected. “It is messed up isn’t it – this job? I can fully and blindly accept that a pretty little socialite uses charity as a means of smuggling drugs into Britain but not that she has anything to do with my conservative housemate with whom she shares a surname.”

“Drug running, tax evasion and PR for daddy’s business,” Simcoe expanded. “I find it strange in a more general sense – investors aside, the majority of people who purchase into the whole idea of alternative energy are the first to take to arms on Twitter when corporations are treated as ‘people’ by the courts; yet they hold to this belief that their power company feeds the hungry and clothes the poor. The whole of it is a bloody scam.”

“Preaching to the choir. I hate this place,” Mary confessed. “And honestly? We are one of the better ones.”

“Or UNICEF is just staffed with better people,” Simcoe commented, pulling up a watchdog rating site on his mobile. “You’re finances are rated at just over ninety percent, transparency, however, seems wanting, so who can really tell?”

“Hm,” Mary considered the compliment. “That could well be.” She closed her eyes and smiled before facing her monitor again with a frown. “I wake up every day wishing I had used my savings to go to law school instead of funnelling them into house that I can’t live in, in a town I don’t like. To that end, I wish I had not been so easily persuaded to move in with my husband’s father who, how to put this – I’d like a lot better if I only saw on Christmas and Easter,” she sighed. “Sorry I – you know what I am dealing with?”

“Likely better than anyone,” Simcoe responded. He reached for a hand that had not been extended and that she did not offer in return. He retracted his.  

Like himself, Mary had no relatives of her own. She had explained that she too had been raised in part by the state, as such, family and the normalcy it promised seemed define her principles whenever immediate circumstance proved a familiar setting. Simcoe questioned in the piercing screams that flooded his mind when these thoughts surfaced if things would have turned out differently for him had he been given much choice in the decision that left him single and childless. If forced family would have left him as compunctious as his comrade in arms. He wondered if Mary’s regrets were rooted or if they were simply reactionary to his continued self-insertion.

“No,” she clarified. “I mean here in the office. I’m gone for a half a day because my son bit someone and I come back to find a school in Nigeria that has been operating and collecting funds for five years doesn’t exist. Embezzlement is easy because, as a rule, the public doesn’t care. But here, in that same internal magazine you were flipping through when my boss waltzed in, there was an article last year about twenty-two girls the non-existent entity graduated that has since made its merry way onto Reddit. So there is a lie I have to retract on top of it. And no one did any research that might aid me in the cover-up. No one! All I have is these true believers weeping over their fair trade, soy triple shot lattés and peanut-butter-Sriracha sandwiches over the fact that NGOs are run like for-profit businesses are.”

“That is certainly,” Simcoe started, unsure how to continue as Mary’s speech further served to remind him that the world was so much vaster than the last few nights. He felt lost in it. In her.

“I was an intern too once. I shouldn’t judge. It is just frustrating. What if there really had been an E. Coli breakout at my son’s school? Nothing would get done around here. Pay is fine, if I were not the only earner in the family, but I so hate this job. With a bachelors in communications it is the best I can hope for though. I feel just – stuck. And then I meet you and …”

She paused, looking at one of the many photographs of her son and husband on her desk.

“Seems there is some truth between a lot of the lies I have been telling recently,” Mary mused. Simcoe did not know what she meant and was afraid to ask. He stared at her in silence.

“Still worried about Hewlett?” she asked as she tossed him a stress ball that looked as if it had suffered a share of abuses from her French manicure in dents that would never right themselves despite the elasticity of the foam. Simcoe looked at his hands, questioning, as he had been since his interrogation with Dr Dandridge, if they were in the process of betraying his apprehension.

“Hm?” he asked crushing the sphere into an oblong in his fist. The raw skin on his knuckles stretched and stung. His hands screamed the last name that Mary had spoken.

“I’m sure if it were serious we would know by now.”

“As we know about Arnold?”

“Shh.”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Woodhull.”

He watched her look from him to he husband.

“Mary,” she corrected. “And John, about earlier, I am sorry if -”

“The blame is mine to share. Truth be told,” he mused aloud, “I bloody well miss England and its loosened moral stances at times.”

 

* * *

 

John Graves Simcoe spent his eighteenth birthday hold back the thick, black hair of a girl who had made herself sick on the sorts of things that held interest for wealthy children in restricted environments. After she had finished being ill, he flushed the toilet for a second time, in this latest occurrence holding her head under for measure as he gave a speech someone who had been legally a minor mere hours before ought not to have had any business giving. It made her sob as he predicted and so he hugged her, trying to provide the comfort and consoling she clearly required as she wept openly – not, she clarified, for a name in his narrative but for a species of migratory birds torn apart by industrial windmills in the North Sea. For herself and for her siblings.

A teary explanation followed per his request, the nature of which would give him pause with each new partner. He had had no trouble whatsoever believing what she had said, not only due to the clarity this gave to their more illicit interactions but due to his other, earlier experiences that owed themselves to the same bloodline. Experiences he shared and she empathised with. The two spoke until there was little else to say. They left their loose friendship in the second storey gents’ room when they gathered themselves up off the linoleum floor.

He did not speak to her again for the rest of the term.

He greeted her once on the first day of fall semester in his final school year – mostly, because she had been standing before him in line for breakfast. It bothered him that her twin had not returned with her, and after establishing his whereabouts (‘ _A Parisian lycée! Ah, isn’t it romantic? Mummy and Daddy either do not know or do not care now that it seems the line’s true heir will make a complete recovery’_ ) Simcoe decided for himself that he was done with the family for good. The absent Eugene had been easy to pick on until recent events had made him object of pity; death itself had failed in its task to reduce the now legendary Edmund to a mere mortal;  and as for Eleanor, well, she had been a decent sparring partner until they had both found themselves on the same side of a stalemate. They drank tea, exchanged a few jests and pleasantries, and returned to their fragile peace for a time.

Shortly before fall leave, Simcoe had broken things off with her best friend for the penultimate time. When she found him in the courtyard that afternoon, he told her he did not want to talk about it. She agreed. Instead, she handed him an invitation for a priced-plate event in which Scotland’s faux-liberal elite could toast to themselves over their vegan haggis for establishing a sanctuary for the birds whose environment had fallen victim to green energy. Simcoe did not want to go. She handed him a newspaper article and a postcard from Paris that changed his mind.

_“So do you want to help me kill three birds with one stone?”_ Ellie Hewlett smiled without smiling.

When he agreed to accompany her, he had no way of knowing how literal the girl’s words would prove.

 

* * *

 

The gala was Edmund Hewlett’s first venture back into society. He had not attended such an event since the stroke. He had always been awkward; only now, thanks to time passed in absolute isolation, he was painfully aware of it. He spoke in stammer to the few people whose names he was certain of, having never possessed a talent for that sort of information, afraid of confusing a Fitzroy for a Fitzgerald. After looking to his mother and assuring himself that she looked pleased enough by his efforts, he stepped out for a fag. Seeing no one else on the terrace beyond a few busboys smoking hurriedly while on shift – something he greeted with a glare – Hewlett decided the habit unfashionable and walked a good distance from the hall and the polite and proper people in attendance to partake in vice.

The autumn air chilled him as he laboured along a curving path, still on crutches, in search of a dry, quiet place to forget the party for five minutes while inhaling a Marlboro Red until its amber ashes gave way to grey dust and he would no longer have a weak excuse not to smile at strangers while he struggled to hold his food on a fork. He found refuge on a bank. He had not yet pulled his lighter from his pocket when he first heard a woman’s scream.

Hewlett, immediately forgetting his fag, his fears, his physical handicap, sprang – or rather limped – to attention. He followed the sound as quickly as he could to an otherwise familiar setting, a steeple turned stable when it would have otherwise fallen into disuse.

At first, he did not notice the bloodied server in the corner under the stone gaze of the martyrs who preceded him, the kicks and cries of the startled horses who found their home under siege. He saw only two shadows locked in a loud struggle. Without pausing for thought, he hit the figure who seemed the assailant with the hallow iron of his left crutch – needing the right to balance his frail frame – with the considerable fury of an otherwise anxious individual who had just seen his respective fag break so rudely interrupted.

He found himself on the stone and mortar floor within the same second.

Hewlett looked into the unblinking eyes of his attacker and found himself fundamentally confused. He knew the face but could not place it to a name. He had never processed a talent for such things. The youth seemed to contemplate him as well with something akin to horror. Hewlett ceased his slithered struggle to free himself from the chokehold, becoming aware that with every second he failed to do so he surrendered just how weak he had grown. Sickness and depression had reduced him from slender to skinny; his bone structure, in turn, transformed by the loss of forty pounds from gorgeous to ghastly, or so he had overhead over hors d'oeuvres. Hewlett felt spittle stream from the side of his lips he struggle for every second of control over. He twisted again from underneath the comparatively considerable weight of his adversary, hoping now only to free a hand that he might wipe his face of shame.

The boy, for his part, looked as if he had seen the face of death itself as he squeaked his name, releasing the tension with which he had him bound to the floor.

It took him another moment to realise he was not the Hewlett who was being addressed. Then, very quickly, the entirety of the situation made itself clear.

His younger sister was rather bookish for a well-bred girl but only particularly intelligent in one, rather devious, fashion. She had somehow come to discover that one of her little school friends had spent two weeks in the company of a kidnapper owing to Edmund’s own, profound error in judgement. The man had, in the time lapsing between Simcoe’s escape and the cold October night of the gala, been convicted on unrelated charges only to see his sentence reduced do to liberal leaning policy and conservative budgetary constraints imposed on the penial system in slow succession. Upon his release, had recognized something in a face his younger brother had unwittingly made famous on the proper side of the Channel and upon his release sought to blackmail –

“Well, I,” Edmund paused. “Ah, that is, Love, due to the sensitive nature of what he knew, what I then discovered – I’m forbidden to disclose that much. I can only tell you that Eleanor, writing under the name of another of her … friends, agreed to the former convict’s demands, saying that she would pay him three fourths of the original sum he asked. She intended to instead see to his demise at an event where she knew the two people who had the most personal grounds on which to wish bodily harm upon him would be in attendance. I doubt she intended to actually involve Simcoe at all - it seemed it was me he resented, rather than the man who had held him hostage based on my lie. No matter, he followed her into harm’s way intending to protect her from whatever it was she had designed. The situation escalated and I arrived with my particular talent of taking things from bad to worse.”

“Edmund I am certain that you are being unfair to yourself,” Anna replied with widened eyes.

He shook his head sadly.

In his severe chastisement of his sister, he ordered her to return to the dinner, find a corner to cry in if she insisted on making a disruption of herself and if anyone should ask, she was to lie for the preservation of her own liberty and tell that she had broken things off with her boyfriend. He stopped Simcoe from following, asking him if he was responsible for the blows the would-be blackmailer obtained in the skirmish.

“ _It was an accident_ ,” he shrugged.

“ _Very well_ ,” Hewlett replied, believing the explanation out of thanks for its simplicity. _“This is what we have to do.”_

Thinking quickly, he took and inventory of the horses, all wild from the sound and movement and sent of blood to which they were not accustom. He picked the one who he guessed to be of the most value, calmed him easily, and lead him over to the body of the convict costumed as help. He then handed the reins to the boy to whom he had yet to identify himself by name. Hewlett clapped to startle the beast and told the lad to hold fast to the lead. Once the unconscious victim had received an additional kicking, he ordered that the horse be realised. Spooked, it ran from the stables. Hewlett took a moment to gather himself and then rang emergency services.

The boy stared and him all the while. Unblinking. Uncomfortably close.

“ _When we are brought in for questioning,”_ he said as he handed over a cigarette, _“you are to tell them that when we snuck out for a smoke, we saw that white horse running wild and were unsuccessful in our attempts to capture him. That explains our fingerprints on the reins should any be discovered. We were close to the stables. Hearing more commotion from within, we went to see if something was amiss and saw found the body. Perhaps he had been trying to steal the Arabian, ah, actually, that bit is of little importance and we would have no way of knowing. We found him in his present condition and phoned for an ambulance.”_

Hewlett was unaware of it, but what he said chilled the boy and reaffirmed every suspicion he held as to Hewlett’s nature. He asked for a second cigarette after having coughed his way through the first.

_“What is your name anyway, kid?”_

_“Billy Gordon. We are cousins I think, on your mum’s side.”_

Hewlett blinked in recognition but did not respond, lighting himself another as well.

 

* * *

 

“The police believed us,” Simcoe said, “until forensic evidence came back to suggest a different narrative. Ells, whose DNA had been found at the scene was taken in for questioning. The copper – the detective rather - who had been assigned to the case, completely out of his fucking league, had something of an understandable grudge against her family. His own had lost its accrued wealth a few years prior when Oyster by some miracle I will never understand – possibly because he only ever offers details when he is pissed on forty-proof – managed to save the family business from folding. Embezzlement. As it were. Confessed to it yesterday. As it suits him. Always. As it suits _him_.”

“Always works,” Mary offered with a shrug. “Maybe I can get him to help me sort this fucking school then.”

“I’m sure he would jump at the chance of redemption, that is to say, if he wakes up. Upon reflection I don’t know that I wish him to.”

Mary pressed her lips together in consideration. Simcoe wondered if he frightened her. He wondered if he should be frightened of himself, of what he might finish when Hewlett again decided that he was no longer on-side. He wondered if his fears were best contained to the present. His friend might not make it until tomorrow.

“No offence, but it kind of sounds like he saved your life.”

“We don’t have capital punishment in the civilized world, but he ‘kind of’ did, until, that is, he felt it otherwise suited him to come clean about the entire incident. While we awaited our fate in the stable with the spooked horses, I told him some of what I am now sworn not to repeat about what treachery lead the ex-con to the charity function to begin with. It had nothing to do with me. Nothing whatsoever. Which is not to say that what Ells tried to do was wrong or that I would not have involved myself if not for the personal stake, but no matter. Hewlett went above Glasgow’s Metropolitan Police Department to the fucking Foreign Office and made the same sorts of threats   that the man I’d beaten into a coma had. A few days later, I was taken from my school in York back across the border to Edinburgh to sign a statement indicating that the lies Edmund Hewlett thought up on the night of the gala were true in the eyes of law enforcement. We were spared sentencing but it could have gone very differently had Europe not been entering an economic recession. I don’t think he so much as took this into consideration. I don’t think he is capable of concerning himself for anything outside of his own immediate interest. Then it was getting his little sister out of holding. Now … I mean, who the fuck knows?”

If it had anything to do with love, he thought, it only spoke of self. Simcoe’s insistence on this as a fact spoke only of survival.

“We are pretty good at hiding bodies,” Mary said.

“Too good,” he agreed uncomfortably.

“So what happened then?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, speaking rather high and rather quick. “When we left, he let me drive his Audi to a nearby pub, we watched a match on the telly, I didn’t drink so that he could, and after that was done we went out separate ways. Few years later I saw him at a wedding - somewhat ironically, we had both stepped out onto the terrace for a smoke. He commented on my French cigarettes being ‘rather dark’, an assessment I agreed with. We exchanged a few slights and then we exchanged numbers when we discovered through conversation that we would both be working in London the following month. I never rang and neither did he. We met here, on the other side of the world, two years back - first in a waiting room and then on the pitch and we came to … appreciate one another’s presence. And then he decided to die and I and you and everyone else in New York have to suffer the fact that he is incapable of standing to his own choices and,” he paused, “and I am the same way when it comes to the little prick. Maybe this morning has done enough to sort us proper. Even if he regains consciousness, I should doubt that things between us can resume as they were. Liability though he can be, I’m truly going to miss the shite.”

Mary thought for a moment.

“I doubt he said anything to the police. It has been hours since we saw them leave the flat. It is possible Hewlett was never there at all, that a neighbour called the cops when -”

“I don’t have neighbours,” Simcoe interrupted. “Most of those flats are owned by Russian and South-East Asian oligarchs hiding ill-gotten funds in real estate.”

“Still, if Tallmadge were looking for you, you would know. If Hewlett were dead or in hospital, you would know,” she argued. It was only then Simcoe realised just how torn up he must have sounded. He felt ashamed.

“Not necessarily. His insurance is expired and he likely no longer carries the card in his wallet. He probably changed his emergency contact to Anna anyway - he would be a fool if he didn’t. Immigration and all.”

Mary Woodhull sighed, rose from her chair, walked around to the other side of the desk and positioned her self vis-à-vis John Graves Simcoe, taking the abused stress ball and now-crumpled magazine from his blood-stained hands. She laid the items beside her keyboard and hoisted herself up a few inches to sit on the desktop, otherwise cluttered with memoirs of the woman she had been or had tried to be before they had met under the sorts of circumstances that served to scatter illusion. She crossed her legs, kicked off her heels, and shook her hair free of its elegant twists.

“And if I remember anything of Anna Smith whatsoever, which, mind, the pictures she sent you last night tell me that I do, she would be so quick to raise arms in retaliation that you would know.”

Women, Simcoe decided, were terrifying. Mary Woodhull remained calm, silently assuring him that he was normal and valid as he lamented over the lower points in the almost-friendship that defined much of his adolescence and the whole of his outsider’s understanding of America. The mention of a long forgotten rival however transformed her all at once into a creature both base and divine.

When she teased him with a smile, the world ceased to matter. His concerns subsided. Mary stroked his leg with a stockinged foot. For a moment, the whole of his worldly cares reduced themselves to his stiffening member and the reality that she seemed to want him as much as he wanted her.

He wanted to have her, to help her.

He wanted that she could resist being as brazen and she was brave.

For he could not.

“Are you truly concerned about Anna Strong?” he asked, trying - and failing - to lower his octane.

“No. And personally, if I were you, I would be more worried about the sister. If she calls though, put me on the line, yeah? I want to get another take on this statement before I submit it to my boss.”

Simcoe snorted.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound heartless but you really need some perspective. Hewlett is not out to get you. From the sounds of it he never has been. You’ll meet up, you’ll get a few insults in that will have to stand in place of apology and then you’ll go back to supressing your emotions like functioning adults.”

“Like you?”

Mary pushed the photograph of her husband down.

“I wish it were that simple,” she said.

Their eyes locked.

“It can be,” he answered, posture straightening as his fingers slowly climbed up her stockings, imagining the skin underneath.

 

* * *

 

“No, absolutely, you are right,” Edmund spoke as he continued to pace. “There have been signs, of course there have been. You know how he is on the field. Hell, from what I’ve heard of how he is on the floor the man can –and often does – turn every interaction into a blood sport. But what does that say about me?”

Anna watched his feet and they travelled back and forth over the floorboards, always, it seemed, a step away from her with every word he uttered, regardless of his current cardinal orientation.

“Nothing,” she grieved. “I know you are both oddly offended by Abigail’s portrayal, but you know what troubles me about it? The parts that have no correspondence to real life. You are not his CO, Eddie. You are not responsible for his actions and outbursts and they do not reflect on you. What does is your continued excusal-”

“Every time he has looked to me for direction I’ve let him down in a way that has lead him to believe such behaviour is acceptable,” he stopped. Stared. Hard. “Look, Love, I only mentioned any of this so you would cease blaming yourself -”

“Really? It has nothing to do with the fact that I asked?”

“Anna -”

“You know what?” she said, returning to the bathroom to retrieve the ring she had left on the sink. “Forget it. Keep living with your damning secrets and toxic ties. Just, give me the pillowcase. Let me start a load of laundry and them I’m out. You can stay here tonight. Or in a jail cell. Or in a morgue. I don’t care. I’ll be gone by Monday anyway.”

Edmund did not move.

“I love you, Anna,” he said softly. “Things just, things became so complicated, so quickly, I lost myself to them, I fear. I’m sorry that it took me so long to say it, I’m sorry that I never said it enough, but perhaps, in the end, it is for the best. We truly ought to quit one another. You’ll get the tavern in the end either way, as I’ve explained; I’ve seen to that much.”

It was not what she wanted in the least.

“You are the only person who without question or pause would charge into battel in my name, expecting nothing in return. How can you be so quick to surrender?”

“You make a better argument than I. I’m sure while Tallmadge sorts out his investigation you’ll make a fine litigator up in Albany.”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get you to answer my question.”

“Haven’t I?” he offered as he walked slowly to the suspended bedframe. He fought a pillow out of its bloodied sack as Anna answered his rhetorical.

“Not in a way that makes sense. I understand that your personal history with John is messy. That I knew before ever knowing the details. I don’t get _what_ you are trying to protect him from by confessing to decade old crimes and asking him to kick the shit out of you. And don’t you dare, don’t you dare say that you owe him! I swear to you that is just taking a present problem and making it all the worse. You may a lack a lot of emotional intelligence but I think you wise enough that that much should be clear.”

“I am afraid I can’t answer you at all,” he said, again failing to face her. “Ah – Anna. Believe me when I say I wish I could. You are everything I have ever loved and admired, everything I ever found beautiful or fearsome or both. I cherish you, I cherish every moment I’ve even spent in your presence, but -”

“But what Edmund? What has John ever done that makes you love him so much more than you love me?”

At this Edmund spun around, approaching her as quickly as his feet allowed as he spoke.

“I don’t. I hate him most of the time, now more than ever if I am to be honest. What John has ‘done’ is set into motion a series of events that served to make me realise I’ll never be worthy of your hand, owing, I suppose, to how I meet crises when I find myself faced with them. Ironically, I’m sure none of it was intentional on his part, I’m sure _‘it was an accident._ ’ Still, he is left with the result he thought he wanted before any of this began, I’ll let him that small victory.”

“There is nothing going on between us!” Anna protested. “The pictures I sent -”

“I know, Love. I know,” he said calmly, as though the statement was a surrender.

“I don’t think you know anything. I think the love I have for you is worth so much more than whatever idea of honour you have that you would gamble it away on.”

He nodded slightly but otherwise did not respond.

Anna shook her head. She would never understand him, she realised. He would never let her.

For the first time she was grateful for the silence between them. Every word that he spoke seemed to deepen the trench that separated them. Her own came out like gunfire. There was no victory to be had. Their love would end in a stalemate.

Anna walked into the kitchen, divided from the rest of the open floorplan by a long island that doubled as a breakfast bar. On the wall that faced it, she found John’s washing machine.

Maybe I’ll stay, she thought as she heard Edmund searching for words and producing nervous stutters. At times, it seemed that he cared for nothing but his own agenda. At times that the whole of his earthly understanding was based on the other. His tragedy had always manifested itself as unbalanced or unrequited love, and yet he was too stubborn to admit to his heartbreak. He saw the best in everyone.

Everyone, it seemed, but himself.

When Anna opened the door to the washer, she felt Edmund’s shame was valid.

Anna reached in to remove the load of laundry left so long it had been largely allowed to dry, wondering, perhaps if it would not be better to add her former fiancé’s few garments and wash the entire mess again. Anna felt around, pulling a shirt out to see if it was drenched in sweat or stale soap, if it reeked or sport or sex or simply mildew.

She saw.

She asked.

She feared the answer and the man she sought it from.

“Edmund,” she said. _“Edmund, what did you do to John?”_

He looked over at her blankly and spoke with a hint of annoyance. “I put him in a dangerous situation only a selfish fool would ever think of bringing a little boy into and eight years later, in the same city no less, I forced him to help me cover up a crime and nearly sold him out when things were not going my way. Then I moved to New York, tried to off myself in the most cowardly way possible, despite knowing – despite knowing that... Ah. What is it really worth now? I proposed to the woman I knew us both to be infatuated with and manipulated him into helping me regain my former financial status in a manner that could see us both imprisoned or killed. I think that about covers it.”

Both, Anna heard. She swallowed. She hoped Edmund had spoken in earnest when he swore the fight they were in had nothing to do with her suggestion that they pretend to argue in order to throw off Tallmadge and his team while she worked out a way to sort their finances. She worried.

“I shouldn’t have to clarify this,” Anna said cautiously, holding up a blood strained QPR jersey. “When you and John got into an –understandable – row, what the fuck did you do to him? Where is he? Is he okay? _What the hell did you do?_ And forgive me but … how?”

“Oh bloody hell! The damned fool!” Edmund cursed as he came over. “One would think that upon committing the nation’s most publicised crime the first thing you would think to do is the fucking laundry. The man is beyond any assistance I can offer. Unbelievable. I bet, I bet,” he said as he practically tore the door off the refrigerator as he opened it. “No. Cider is still here but at least he brought the wine back to Trader Joe’s. At least there is that.”

Anna considered for a moment Edmund’s entire reaction to the odder than ordinary behaviour his friend had been exhibiting in the last few days. She thought of the crime scene - the tavern that only received a DOH rating of ‘C’ because she accentuated her cleavage during inspection - so spotless that not a single print could be lifted from any surface.

Edmund greeted the absence of cheap wine as the only luck he had had met or could expect.

“Red?”

“Anna, don’t.”

“John doesn’t drink wine if he can help it and would therefore have no idea of how to store it. I don’t buy my white from Trader Joe’s. How many bottles were there?”

“Ah …” Edmund buried his eyes in his hands. It seemed he had been living with this knowledge for some time. The world stopped. Anna could here his shallow breath but felt as though she could not breathe at all. Edmund Hewlett knew what happened to Benedict Arnold.

His tragedy was that he could not differentiate between friend and foe.

His tragedy was that he still saw John Graves Simcoe as the little boy he had unwittingly put in more danger than he himself had known to exist.

Everything was bad.

Everything was bare.

But Edmund was blind.

“How long … have you known?” Anna inquired.

Edmund took a long while before electing to answer.

“Known? Since this morning when I actually got him to hit me. I’d suspected since yesterday at lunch when I noticed how raw his knuckles were. It is difficult not to, he … plays … with things when he has something to be nervous about. That and … and he is normally so keen to brag about a fight he had been in. Then I came over last night, saw the cider, asked him if he had bought it for me. The fact that he said _‘yes’_ was indication enough that something was deeply wrong. Ah! Don’t look at me that way. Please. You don’t know him as I do. He is a good person, Anna. He is, he wouldn’t, if anything happened -”

“Edmund!” she shouted. “Do you hear yourself? Look what he did to you; imagine what he did to Arnold! Wherever he is now -”

“He is probably in a bookstore brooding over Lord Byron, tapping his fingers against the spine, with fifteen scattered tea cups around him, terrified that I have not gotten up yet. He is a danger to no one but himself at this point,” he countered, almost disinterested in the immediate.

“We need to call the police.”

“We need to do the laundry.”

“Edmund!” she screamed as he pulled the detergent out from under the sink. “This is not your fight and you shouldn’t make it yours.” Anna reached out to him, saying sweetly, “We could be done with this. One phone call and we could be done. We could leave; we could go to your home – to Scotland.”

He took a step back.

“No. For all my faults Anna, I’d never seek to abandon a friend to his own fate. I’ve learned my lesson there.”

“This isn’t friendship.”

“It is all I know of it.”

“Why do you insist -”

“Because I’m selfish, Anna! Because I can’t let things go.”

“Why?” Anna demanded again as Edmund, still clutching the pillowcase stained with his own blood, sank down against the counter dividing the kitchenette from the rest of the flat.

“Aluminium, Aubergine …” he muttered to himself, gently pulling at the fibre of the sheet, failing to meet her gaze and she slumped down across from him.

Anna sighed, waiting for an answer that was long in coming, lifting her loosened bun to feel the chill of the metal appliance against her shoulder blades and the back of her neck. She ran her fingers along the lines created by the titles on the kitchen floor – together. Untouching. Platonic. It was then she realised once more that for all that Edmund had spoken, he had never answered her original question. Or perhaps, she feared, he had. She squeezed the ring she continued to clutch in her dominant hand until the crest it bore imprinted itself on her palm. She would never bear his name. Edmund’s face was masked by the cloth he examined. She would never see him through her own veil. Anna questioned if she had ever truly seen him at all.

She closed her eyes, listening to the hum of the evening traffic, of the refrigerator, of the central air. She listened to Edmund stammer and stutter, choking on syllables that should have been words. Perhaps, Anna considered, there was nothing to be said. Perhaps he had no more explanations or excuses to offer.

She longed for silence.

He spoke.

“Empathy. Ah, yes I – I rather think that is what is comes down to, Love. Though I confess I, that is, said aloud it seems more selfish than anything I can – and have – presented to you, that is pertaining to those equally lofty themes of guilt, fear,” he paused, “or debt. I’m woefully indebted to him. Every day it gets worse.”

“He tried to kill you. He killed a public figure. I’d say all bets are off,” Anna replied.

Edmund continued, not seeming to hear her simple logic. “Over here it is, oh, how should I attempt – you know, we both have ah, rather, well … rather pronounced speech impediments, Simcoe and I. It is awkward. Societally, at home, it is awkward, but here, here in America it is downright nightmarish. It is openly mocked, as though our accents were not fodder for farce enough on their own.”

At this, she blinked. “No one is -”

“It is really, it is a small example, but I have no one else. Believe me I, I hate him a decent half of the time – often, I swear, far more. Were I to, after a long, trying day, to take to complaining about another loop of a conversation with a local stranger; say whichever word de jour your culture has decided sounds comical in the moth of a Brit, followed by laughter, followed by a second request. Well, another Englishman – most of the lads on our team, as it were - would either see an opportunity to make a joke at the expense of my admittedly posh upbringing. This, of course, is only when there was none to be made in how long it takes me to say any given word, of how my tongue seems to fumble it. And then I hear in it – in their collective response – all of the stifled snickers of everyone I used to know. Of everyone I never had the chance back home due to my disability. I’m twenty again, my tongue is heavy and half paralysed. I’m twenty-two and I’m staring at myself in the mirror, trying desperately to mimic the shapes with my lips meant to make syllables sound as they should but I can’t hear any difference. It is far better than it was but in my mind then, now, I hear only laughter. When I speak. Until I scream.”

“Edmund, it is not half as noticeable as you think,” Anna lied. “I doubt anyone, Wakefield or Appleton or any of your other lads, if they knew -”

“You are right, Love. I’ve nothing to complain about,” he responded dismissively, “Not by comparison. I was – I was isolated in a palace. John went through all of the same torment at boarding school, which, mind, is its own distinct hell all on its own. I hazard to even imagine, truly, how much worse it must be when strangers approach _him_ and demand that he speak for their amusement.”

“Forgive me I cannot pity John in the slightest under present circumstance. Any circumstance,” she added, realising that she herself had asked both of them to pronounce words in the Queen’s English without much consideration, same as she had with any of the other invaders who sat at her bar. “We like the accent, it is charming, in its way. No one wants to offend you and I am sorry if I ever -”

“Or so I have been told by every American I’ve ever brought this up to. And while I appreciate it, truly, and I know in my heart of hearts that you are right, sometimes what I - what I suppose we all really need, is for someone who can relate to simply shake their heads with us, tell us they know but that we are being an absolute tit over it an offer up a round.”

“You are being an absolute tit,” Anna retorted in the cadence of BBC exports and British expats. For the first time since she had discovered the secret he tried to conceal behind others Edmund met her gaze. His eyes were empty, his countenance bare. When he silently handed her the case of the pillow he had nearly been smothered by, it felt as though he had pulled it from his pocket and slapped her face in an invitation to duel. It felt like a shot through the heart. Anna swallowed, wishing she could swallow her words. Wishing that Edmund would swallow his Scot’s pride.

Europe was about the past, it was about conflicts ending in stalemates, treaties that birthed new spats between the same players. America was about the future, about hope, about inclusion. It was the dream invented by man and God as an answer to the nightmare of the world of old. It was welcoming, if one was willing to be welcomed into it. The fact that Edmund was blind to this, that he saw barricades and barriers in otherwise bustling streets  Anna decided, had little or nothing to do with how he spoke but what he said. She had finished listening. She wished she had words for her former fiancé which would not turn into weapons, into wounds.

She longed for silence.

He spoke.

“It is not only the matter of speech; it is not only the chore of talking that no one seems to understand. It is general. It is not fitting in. Not being wanted by the world you were born into and not quite being welcome in the one outside of it because of baseless envy and ill-assigned blame. Do you know what it is to spend every night in revision only to be told that your marks - that your university placement itself - was purchased by something beyond your own sweat and tears? Or to respond to unwanted and unwarranted critique dismissively and then be charged with classism, racism, whatever – _ism_ is most applicable as well as many that are not applicable at all? To try and to _fail_ and to be met with scorn by locals who wish you to just hurry your way through integration as though it were simple? And then bloody Andres of the world who make it seem so … ah! Do try to understand - I need, I truly need someone who understands where I’ve been. Where I am at. Simcoe is the only one in New York who can truly be said to, perhaps the only one in the world. I’m lonely, Anna. Sometimes, I confess I am, truly, deeply lonely. I refuse to be truly alone on top of that.”

Anna looked at the dried blood. The only one who was alone, as Edmund put it, was she herself. You had me, she thought.

“I almost abandoned him, you know. Not, not two decades ago. Recently. Two months? I almost – he had um.” He paused, shifted. Continued briskly with the bitterness of a man clutching on to the belief that effort was too much to ask. “Ah, never you mind. It is not my story to tell and to be perfectly honest it is one I wish I had never heard.”

“Well, now I am all ears,” Anna said. Edmund shifted again. Winced. She wondered if he noted the arid sarcasm in her tone, if he was in physical pain, or if it was simply too painful to recognise that he did not have a decent explanation for his continued defence of a monster. Simcoe in his thievery had sold him out long before Edmund had decided to step in front of a loaded gun that had not so much as taken aim. His eyes narrowed. Anna matched his glare. She knew herself far from innocent, but since naming her almost-lover’s demon, she had done nothing but try to help him slay it. Every moment they wasted in stale contention gave the enemy another chance to strike a fatal blow. Edmund Hewlett, patron saint of pointless redemption, would not see this until it was too late.

He sighed.

He spoke.

“Last year, he went back to London on holiday, fucked a girl we both know without a wrapper. There was a pregnancy scare; ultimately, she had an abortion without consulting him. I don’t know that he knows this.”

“And?”

“Ah, yes well, my role in all this - he asked me to read the report on his father’s accident, his mum’s suicide note. Just out of the blue, no explanation at first, wanted to know if he should have a go of it or not. And I did. And advised him he shouldn’t. He said he might have reason to expect a child of his own. Wanted to know if he would – if his parents ever … and I said, it doesn’t matter. He would be able to rise to it, the challenge, I mean. Even if his parents …”

“What did it say?” Anna knitted her eyebrows.

“It doesn’t matter,” Edmund spoke, but not, she noted, to her. “What does is that where John might to this day not know the psychosis of his mum’s death, he certainly knows the circumstances. And then I, few months after being reminded of this tragedy, thought to swallow a bottle of Xanax myself. And he was the first fucking face I saw when I awoke in hospital. This bastard, he started in with probability and statistics. Immediately, almost laughing as though he was happy I woke up just so he could finally argue a topic we’ve long held fundamental disagreements about. And when I returned to Whitehall he would not stop texting me, maths, science, politics, football, cricket, any subject of he could imagine we’d naturally quarrel over, thinking –  well, knowing - that I’d not try to make another exit before getting in the last word. Because he is _fundamentally wrong_ – in all of his assessment he is so, so,” Edmund’s pace accelerated steadily until his mouth could no longer keep up with his thoughts. He paused. His eyes found Anna’s again. She found a soul behind them.

“It worked. It finally worked. After years of therapists’ couches and hospital visits, it seems all I ever really needed was for someone I otherwise intellectually respect to write me in earnest, arguing that statistics ought to be considered pure mathematics, as though the formulae -”

“Numbers don’t lie, people do,” Anna offered, interrupting him. “I have to admit; I never made it past Algebra Two in high school and took maybe one remedial course as a freshman in college … heh, eight fucking years ago now. You really have me at a loss when you talk about things like this.”

“No, no,” Edmund seemed to apologise as his face lit up. “I think you have it. More so than some of our acquaintances,” he smiled.

Anna shrugged. She wondered if she ever truly understood what he was saying, if confusion owed itself it accent, ignorance, on incompatibility. Edmund crawled over to her, placing his hand atop her own.

“I got over myself. Ultimately.”

“Did you?” Anna challenged, glancing from the once beautiful man beside her to the sheet he wanted to wash with all of the rest of his shame. With the rest of Simcoe’s sins. Edmund grabbed it gently away.

“The problem is, I – well, my successes have been countered by his setbacks. I fear I am to blame.”

“Listen to me,” Anna spoke sternly. “Hear me Edmund. Simcoe is not your responsibility. You are not his cousin, parent, CO -”

“I never -”

“I only mention this because you seem to forget that you were a child too when you both first met. Please, let us just call the police. Wash our hands of it and be done.”

“You know I can’t do that. For the very practical, secular reason that if Simcoe becomes the target of this investigation, I could go to jail for the rest of my life. In Great Britain it is not worth the opportunity cost to bring a charge against me, here, in an election year, the atmosphere is ripe to roast bankers and businessmen alike. We would not stand a chance.”

“If you remain the target -”

“Tallmadge isn’t stupid. I’m not guilty and sooner or later he will realise that if he hasn’t already. That Paki copper has, you can tell, it is no good. I just need to keep them distracted until Arnold shows up.”

“Dead?”

“No. Simcoe is brash but he lacks conviction as I think should be evident,” he said, gesturing to himself.

“Have you seen yourself? Do you hear yourself?” Anna demanded, hearing her mother’s deep smoker’s voice in its litigation tone as the words passed her lips, giving her pause. She felt her mind shift from prosecution to defence. She studied Edmund as he smiled weakly.

“I’m alive, Anna. And for all the shit we’ve been through, that we are going through, that is my fault – yesterday Simcoe still had the gall to call me his best friend. I don’t know that he meant it, part of me doubts that he possibly could. But truth be told, I rather suppose he is mine. He may be my _only_ friend. He saved me from my demons though - by God! - it must have put him through hell to do so given the too familiar nature of my suicide. But he did. And who the fuck would I be if I didn’t make an attempt to do the same? To abandon him where he protected me? What would you do if it were one of your friends, Love?” he demanded.

“My friends would never hurt anyone,” Anna replied flatly.

“Have you ever read Abigail’s fiction?” Edmund choked back a bitter laugh.

“I didn’t think you would be so offended.”

“Again I ask, have you ever – no. No.” He rubbed his temples. “I have a more fitting example - have you, my dear, ever _actually_ had a conversation with Brewster? After one drink? After two?”

“My friends would never hurt me,” she clarified.

He failed to reply.

Eventually, Edmund’s taciturnity was masked by electric hum. Anna felt his long, elegant fingers as they brushed back a stand of hair that had found its way to her face, only to be replaced by a reserved kiss. The white buzz blurred into void. Anna closed her eyes as she leaned against him, feeling his arm as it extended towards embrace.

“I beg to differ,” he spoke in a whisper of regret. “I think we can only truly be hurt by the people we love. I’m sorry. God Anna, I am so sorry. I never wanted, or intended any of this to get so out of hand. I – I need to take control before it is lost completely. Call it friendship, or folly, or what you will. I’ll find out what happened and I’ll … I’ll figure out what to do. I’ll fix things. I have to. But I - I’m so, so very sorry. Causing you doubt or pain is the last of what I ever would have intended. I love you so much.”

“Edmund -” she started, but words would not follow. She traced his jaw line, touching his lips where they had broken, backing at the stick of Neosporin, at the bruises she had managed to cover in her attempt to build a stint for his broken nose. At the contusions on his neck and chest, dark as the eyes employing her for grace.

“He strangled me last night. That was out of aggression,” he said. “That I will allow you. The rest, the scars that serve to frighten you the most, I _asked_ him to do that this morning when I put together his odd behaviour, bloodied knuckles, the wine and cider he has stored in his fridge. He put up more of a fight not to hit me than he actually did … well, here. In the act. My point is - I know him Anna, same as he knows me. Simcoe, he, he has these protective tendencies, he wouldn’t simply - even in a situation that might otherwise warrant it – there is something, or someone rather, whom he is likely trying to defend. I mean to help where I can. And yes, partially at least, for the most selfish of reasons.”

He meant friendship rather than freedom. Anna’s heart shattered with her reservations.

She bit her lip. “I don’t think you selfish. I wish you had more of that in you, if I am being honest.”

“No you don’t. You would cease to respect me if I surrendered the position of my brother in arms. If I failed to defend it. You would do the same for anyone you cared about. I love that about you.”

“If it were one of my friends - I think. I think I’d need a drink, before I even could think,” she conceded. Anna did not know if she was as noble as Edmund would have her. If he was noble himself or simply yet deeply misguided. She knew she loved him, she knew she shouldn’t. She knew that regardless of where this went, she would match his lengths.

“Last night was filled with libations,” he agreed.

“I can tell,” Anna said as she wrinkled her nose. “Around forty-eight fluid ounces of cider, a fifth of something hard and foreign, bad coffee?”

“Have you been spying on me again?” he almost chuckled.

“No, I am, however, a great bartender. Was,” she corrected herself, “was. Now I guess I will have to be a great attorney.”

“Between John and me, we will get the tavern back in your name. I promised -”

Anna shook her head. “Between you and John, I’ll be in court for the next decade at least. Did you ever try, I don’t know, just talking?”

“About what precisely? We’re British, darling, more show than tell,” he said, adding with painful acceptance, “Simcoe doesn’t hear a word I say, anyway. He never has.”

“Then I guess you know how I feel,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Did you ever _try_ though?”

Unable to rid herself of the urge, she spoke.

She raged.

“Did you ever think it wouldn’t be simpler to say to one another ‘ _thank you_ ’ or ‘ _I’m sorry’_ as the situation allows, instead of, oh, I don’t know, stealing horses to hide bodies behind? Did you ever think, for a minute, that it would have been far less trouble to simply tell me that you have no credit history, no trust fund to fall back on? As opposed to ease dropping on a secret agent and getting a friend whom you know to be ‘in crisis’ to help you stage a community theatre production of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’? Did you ever -”

“Did you ever find yourself in a situation where you would spit in the face of God Himself to bring a smile to the lips of a person you love?” he countered. Loudly. She had never heard him truly raise his voice before. Anna, however, did not note the volume. She noted the fixed verb. She noted its tense. “Have you ever been caught between the impossibility of a task and the impossibility of refusing it?” She noted the blame. This was not about Simcoe. About Glasgow. About Benedict Arnold. This was not about battery, blood, or banking. This was - and always had been - about them. Anna heard her own heartbeat as her pulse quicken. The room filled with pause. For one, the silence fell into her control.

“Well, this one time I feel in love with a man who did not trust himself to love me,” she said after a moment that felt like an age. “I asked him to marry me as an equal and he told me he had already gambled our future off on my pipe dream.”

“I’ll not permit you to speak of the future you want and worked for -”

“The future I _want_ is with you,” she spat. Softened. Slightly. “Your problem is that you don’t see one for yourself. You are not as selfish as you think, Edmund, but you are sure as fuck not as smart either.”

“Anna -”

“Look, I get it. You have a history. You have strong morals and stronger ties and I love that about you. I disagree with the very basis of your character assessment but that doesn’t mean I don’t sympathise with the decisions that –you’re right - I find myself unable to empathise with. But I don’t need to see your shining armour tested. All I need, all I _want_ , is an answer.” She took back her hand from under his and held the ring he had once given her before his eyes.

“Is marriage still the question? Be sensible Anna, if anything should happen to me, and you are right, I’ve certainly managed to find myself in a position where that is a distinct possibility, I would not want your honour to be -”

“My honour?” she gaped. “My Honour is my own, sir. My heart is yours if you’d have it. Come what may. That is what love is, Edmund. It is not duty or obligation or fear or guilt or debt. It is not rushing to the front line under heavy fire. It is coming home from war. That is how I feel around you – home, whole, happy. Happy, Edmund! And if there must be a fight to return to that, well, it is one worth having.” She closed her eyes as she was draped in his caress. His skin was the softest she had ever felt. Her cheeks moistened, though she could not tell if from his tears or her own. He repeated her name with his pleas for forgiveness. All she heard was the sound of his heart, drumming louder as he began to trust himself enough to touch her in ways he otherwise found as foreign and daunting as he found New York. She pulled him ever closer, tilting her lips to meet his.

Anna backed. Wiping her lips free of disinfectant, remembering its the cold burn where they were and how they had ended up on the hard kitchen floor of a killer, arguing about the bloodied laundry that had been left to dry and stagnate in the machine. The machine he had her up against.

“I only took the bet because I never wished to marry for any reason other than love,” Edmund whispered, calling her back to the dream he seemed lost in. “And I love you Anna. I love you more than -”

“Than wealth or power or the illusion of both?” she challenged.

“Yes, and -”

She put her fingers to his lips.

“Yes is enough. Yes is all I want or need. The rest we can figure out.”

Edmund grinned, then pouted as Anna wrangled herself form the embrace. She found the pillowcase on the floor and added it to the wash. Edmund stuttered his gratitude and astonishment.

“It is too late to soak it, if detergent can’t remove the stain, we’ll have to dispose of the contents,” Anna answered with a wink. “We might anyway - I never could stand The Rangers and would be happy to watch the jersey burn.”

Anna held no opinions or allegiances to the second tier of English Football. Edmund knew this. He also know that what she meant was ‘ _if this matters so much to you, it matters to me’_ , which Anna appreciated. It saved her the trouble of having to admit it.

“I don’t trust John,” she continued, starting the laundry. “I trust you. Keep trusting me; I’ll get you both out of whatever mess you are in. You may have rank and your mate - not mine - may have field experience, but I am willing to bet I am a better tactician that either of you combined. And Eddie, I’ll take that last cider now.”

“I’ll take my ring,” he smiled before turning to make a step towards the refrigerator.

“No,” Anna said, reaching out, grazing his bum with her fingertips before he could take another step.

“No?” Edmund asked as he took her hand, turning around once more to meet her.

“Not just like that.”

“You told me not to take a knee!” he objected, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I didn’t tell you to take away the charm entirely.”

“What charm, pray tell?”

“What charm indeed,” Anna cleared her throat. “Edmund Hewlett, former prince, current prime suspect, eternal fool – you are the kindest, most decent, most noble, most infuriating man I have ever had the pleasure and stress of knowing. Will you do me the honour of talking me as your wife that I might claim spousal privilege under US Federal Common Law?”

“That depends; have these colonies nothing of attorney client privilege?”

Anna pressed her lips together as she thought. “Not in incidences of tort, to cite the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court’s ruling in _Clark v. United States,”_ she responded mimicking his accent and the pace at which he spoke of the stars. Edmund blinked at her, chocking to swallow a word she could tell was a gendered slut as he fought the urge to laugh. Maybe later Simcoe could tell him that he was an absolute tit, in thanks to her if nothing else. Anna broke into laughed at the absurdity of it all. She fell into Edmund’s open arms, dreaming of the day when her vast knowledge of the American legal system would only be called upon to force the man she hoped to marry to admit to his deficits.

“I confess then my near total ignorance to the subject,” he said as if reading her mind. “But that is … ah, quite interesting.”

“I don’t get your astrophysics stuff either, but I love watching your face illuminate as you take pains to explain it.”

“It is never a ‘pain’ as you say -”

“Edmund, stop,” Anna swallowed, regaining her composure from the exhaustion, anger and euphoria that sought to deprive her of it entirely. “In all seriousness. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Do you want to spend yours with me?”

“Yes, of course, I -”

“Good. Now it is your turn.”

“Same format? Right I’ll have a go of it, then. Anna Strong, once-and-future famous barmaid of a one-horse town, you are, absent of question or doubt the bravest, most beautiful and by Jove the most brilliant creature ever born to this earth. Can you, in your relentless, stubborn, and at times coldly judgmental manner, accept the love of the fool who stands before you? Did I, ah, did I get that right?”

“Yes,” Anna laughed. “And yes, with pleasure and with all my heart, yes!”

She slipped the ring onto his finger; he stretched out his arm to admire something he had worn for half his life as though it were a foreign object. Anna giggled again, reclaiming his attention.

“How do I deserve you?” he whispered as he pulled her into a tight and tender embrace.

“You don’t,” she teased.

“Ah -”

“Kidding, Edmund. I’m –oh!”

He picked her up, deaf to her small cries of protest and placed her on the washing machine, screaming and shaking and sending tremors though Anna as it started its run. Edmund explained in the awkward manner she realised that she had come to adore that he suspected a belt was loose as he slid her unzipped dress down off her shoulders.

“Edmund,” she purred.

“To forward?” he spoke as he slowly, lightly traced the line created where her bra met her skin, “It is only that, you had ah, been complaining about your undergarments as it were and I imagine that -”

“No I,” Anna gazed into his deep, dark eyes as they stared at her with an untampered lust too tameless for him to translate into words. “I would,” she paused, inhaling deeply as she felt his moistened lips graze her cleavage, “quite like to be rid of this.”

To her surprise and satisfaction, her breasts were liberated almost the instant she voiced the desire. Edmund cradled, caressed and kissed them – softly against the skin reddened by the rouge under wire’s assault, frenzied in places of pleasure. Anna let out soft moans, at first to encourage him, then without pretention as she felt herself moisten as the tip of his tongue danced around her areola.  The disinfectant she had used to mend his lips tickled and tingled against her raw nipples after saliva and sweat should have seen them washed. Edmund stroked and squeezed with something akin to certainty until Anna ran her fingers through the back of his hair, pulling him to eye level, in her passion not quite as delicately as she had intended.

“No good?” Edmund enquired. Anna answered by inserting her tongue into his open mouth as he choked for breath. She wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling a pressure that left her in desperate want of that she knew to be impossible.  

“Not as inexperienced as you claim?” she teased when he broke osculation.

“I’m a physicist,” he grinned, “I can figure out a simple clasp.” She noticed her bra had not left the hand he used to balance them both, the machine still engaging in epilepsy despite the pressure and weight she would have thought would silence it.

“That is not _entirely_ what I -”

“I know what you meant. It doesn’t alter my – ah actually, speaking, speaking of physics, as it were, there is ah – I want to attempt something. May I?”

“What then?”

He backed up slightly, teasing her inner thigh with a slow brush as encouraged it to release him. His fingers climbed the bulk of black fabric collected at her waste. He tugged at it, his eyes meeting hers as he awaited permission. Anna was glad he did not see –and hoped he did not feel – the various undergarments the promised slow suffocation and a slender waistline.

“Let me,” Anna said quickly, pushing him back as she sprang to the floor. The machine grew louder unburdened. She glanced quickly at Edmund, who seemed preoccupied in his sudden annoyance, muttering to himself about there being a likely fire hazard. Anna let her borrowed Chanel fall with ease, as eager to be done with her as she was with it. Her shaping pants and control tops were less quick to surrender – aided by the moisture of her flesh, they were being as difficult to remove as they had been to put on in the first place. She silently thanked the potential fire hazard for allowing her a moment’s modesty; her cheeks aflame when she noticed Edmund’s attention had found its way back to her.

“Come here,” he smiled. Anna wondered why he would want to see her naked at all.

“Why do women do this to themselves?” he muttered as, with comparative ease he slipped his long fingers underneath her corsets, separating them from her dampened skin and removing them from her midsection. Anna took a deep breath. “Now, now,” said Edmund as he leaned to kiss her, robbing her of it entirely. His hands were still stuck against her hips. When they reached her panty line, they abandoned their original quest, Edmund, still locked in a kiss, trancing the length of her thong, seeking the warmth of the lips he had yet to meet. All of the oxygen Anna had deprived herself of for the day’s duration returned to her in a single instant as his fore – and index fingers entered her, his thumb fumbling for, and finding, the area to which her own were drawn in lust and loneliness.

“How –“

“Physics,” he said. “Ah Anna I, I’m sure this is – I …” He took back his hand.

“Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop,” she begged.

“I – I am not I … I think you should turn around, yes, yes, that is it,” he said, spinning her round and sliding behind her. He completed his liberation of her legs in a single swift motion. Edmund took the dress from the floor where it lie in defeat and folded it inelegantly on the loud laundry machine. “For your … here,” he said, bending her over the washer. The vibrations trembled through her as he spread her legs. Without allowing her a moment’s anticipation, she felt him enter. Anna cried out his name.

“Ah – oh, oh God, I ought to have,” her fiancé stammered, stopped in mid -thrust.

Anna broke out into laughter. “Edmund I, no, no please, don’t stop I -”

“I, of course I recognise that I’m not all that you … well, ah, that isn’t to say that I in anyway think or mean to imply -”

Anna was mortified by the cachinnations that fell from her control. She attempted to explain through her involuntary cackles that she could not believe or accept that he had never been with a woman before. Edmund was embarrassed. Clearly, Anna thought. He seemed confused, when not completely scarred by her sounds. He froze within her. Anna prayed he had not gone limp. When she asked him to continue, asked him, in apologetic tones if he could, he complied.

“I really was not certain either if this arrangement could be functional as … such, but I imagined with the torque created between John’s washer and myself I might at least hope -”

“God, you really are a virgin, aren’t you?”

“Well … not as it were in this present moment -”

“Edmund, just tell me I am beautiful.”

“You, you are. I apologise sincerely -”

They were going to have so much to discuss after he had finished, Anna realised.

“So are you. Don’t stop. Don’t speak,” she commanded.

He didn’t.

Anna traversed her sexual memory in search of another incident in which she had been truly fucked by a man making love to her. With Edmund it seemed there was little division. The tender kisses he placed in the nape of her neck and between her shoulder blades were a contradiction to the way her pounded her against the makeshift vibrator with all of the fury, haste and cold desperation that seemed to define his business dealings. Her inner thighs trembled under his grip, crushing and compassionate all at once. He slowed to regain his composure the moment his _Ahs_ began echoing her _Ohs_. His breathing overwhelmed the gowns of the overworked, overburdened appliance. He stopped.

Apologising that he did not wish to finish before she did, he slid himself out from within her. Anna turned around to meet his still throbbing member, kneeling to kiss it and lick it free of remnants of her waters, which she could feel between her trembling thighs continue to shame the Hudson and its sisters for their flow. Edmund joyously pleaded for her to stop. Anna continued to tease, halting only when a surprisingly sweet taste reminded her that brilliant lover was never wrong in his calculations.

“You are perfect,” he told her as once more he lifted her on to the device, as once more she entangled her impossibly long legs around his soft but slender waist. He entered again. Each thrust serving to separate them, he told her to hold on as he awkwardly lifted her from the laundry. He was still within her as he moved to carry her out of the kitchen, laughing that this all looked far easier in pornographic videos. Anna compared herself to the women Edmund might fantasise about sleeping with, explained - as women are want to do regardless if they agree with the assessment or if it is warranted - that she was too heavy, there was no way he would be able to carry her to the bed. Edmund responded that it was the position and his relative inexperience at fault. She was perfect, but he had no intention of taking her to bed just yet.

With that, he crushed her against the flat’s glass outer wall, made colder by comparison to his heat. Anna’s feet found the floorboards as Edmund, arms and elbows braced against the wall began to take her against it. “No, no, that simply won’t do,” he commented after a minute’s action. “Wait here.”

Anna watched him walk over to a chair his blazer was folded over and remover something from the pocked. She questioned if he was seeking assistance, concerned that he owed his erection to something obtained on the street. “No, my dear, I have not taken my heart medication in over 24 hours. I am fine, least in this respect. I fear in this particular incidence it is you, rather than I, in need of some ah – aid.”

When he kneeled to kiss her, she understood. He had taken a mint; his tongue caused her tender lips to tingle as he explored their folds. Between moans, Anna breathlessly insisted that he wasn’t a virgin. Edmund agreed once more that she was, in fact, now correct in her assessment, though in the morning her had been. Borrowing from her script, he bade her not to speak. Anna, however, was unable to keep from shouting his name as he shouldered his way between her thighs.

“I … I’ve never been kissed that way before,” she exhaled as he paused to breathe.

“Want to taste?” His words seemed to wink.

Anna drank the drops of salt and menthol from his wide lips as she collapsed to meet them. She stroked his member until it began to harden in her hands, whilst his were preoccupied with all of her parts deemed private. He knew how to touch she remarked again in the awe she felt incapable of escaping. “I never claimed to be a saint, love,” he responded.

Edmund carried her to John’s hanging bedframe, laying her on the hard mattress. It shook as he climbed up to join her. Anna’s eyes widened, remembering in the scent of the sheets that the two of them were not suspended somewhere free of eternity – of jealously, blame and consequence. She felt herself dam up again despite all of Edmund’s hard work as he climbed atop her. Anna forced a smile, constraining and releasing the muscles that surrounded his path of entry in a way that made him moan.

“Edmund, what if John should return?” she asked.

“To hell with propriety, I’m so happy right now.”

Anna closed her eyes.

Her mind again betrayed her lover to the loose tempered boy whose bed they occupied. Who would doubtlessly take the act as another betrayal at a time that otherwise necessitated trust.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … you know they dead.
> 
> Quick shout out before I get to the notes, the ever-brilliant [CalamityBean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityBean/pseuds/CalamityBean) was kind enough to take the time months ago when I first started drafting this chapter to drop some of her vast equestrian knowledge on me. Apparently, it is very easy to spook a horse.  
> Some of the current events items that appeared in this monster of a chapter included devolution and racial violence in Glasgow, migratory patterns of birds being interrupted by industrial windmills, money laundering in New York real estate, the revolving door between charity and business and collections for a school that never existed. I took a very loose, very liberal approach to them, but all of these things were admittedly lifted from various news sources which I am sure will show up if you want to throw a google at them. 
> 
> IN OTHER NEWS!
> 
> Hide and Seek is nearly a year old! (Yay!) Now, I know that I ask too much of my readers as-is ( _how can the ships not be the most significant relationship in a fic? Have I never heard of genre? And oh, the plot – why so vast? Why so involved?_ ) but I am going to ask that you help me celebrate by leaving comments / kudos. I feel so bad about it but …  
> I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for those that I do receive and for the lovely, beautiful people who leave them. I love writing this fic, but honestly, the best part of it is the social element, and I would love to hear from you especially.  
> As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> XOXO- Tav
> 
> Up Next: Anna and Mary vs. everyone


	23. The Send Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akinbode ends things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back lovely faces! My how I have missed you. I have a bit of a disclaimer before we get started; the chapter I wrote this go-around is over fifty pages long. Fear not! These are only the first ten.
> 
> The bad news is I return to you with a secondary character’s point of view. The good news is in the spirit of not wanting to overwhelm you, I have staggered this update and we will see a lot more of each other over the next week or two. The girls are back next time - this is a gents night out.
> 
> Warnings include but do not limit themselves to: football references, sexuality, light religiosity, hideous breakups, extramarital affairs. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

He did not ask when Simcoe opened the door to him with a painted smile and blackened eye. If he noticed Hewlett’s various cuts and contusions he made no mention of them, and nor did they. The two did not afford him an explanation for the various maps strewn out across the dining table; the statistical analysis he knew had nothing to do with the scheme in which he had become a willing participant. The girls offered him cider, coffee, powdered tea costing more per kilo than cocaine. He declined.

By the time he and the lads had driven across the border, stacked with four others in Simcoe’s Range Rover, he had begun himself believe that his friends were capable of temporarily abdicating from their own tremendous concerns in favour of his care. An hour into blanketing paper men with bullets, however, he saw that his captain was so removed from his surroundings that his basic operations had become as semi-automatic as the weapon in his hands. Hands, Akinbode hoped, were laden only with the left back’s blood. Simcoe’s speech was high and haughty, hastened and wholly detached from any of the short conversations in which they engaged. Initially, Akinbode had been grateful. He was weary of pity. He was weary of the word ‘ _fine_ ’ and the questions otherwise forced upon him that required him to repeat it.  

Beer was fine, as was the handgun, as was he over the breakup, at least when it was brought up. Most of his otherwise socially inept teammates had eventually stopped asking, either satisfied with his response or themselves responding to clear cues. A man who spent his Thursday night answering the patriotic call of opening a can of Coors Light by firing at a silhouette whose name he would not utter but whom all present could reasonably identify as the man who had fucked his now ex-girlfriend - based on where he discharged most of his cartridge - was most certainly not _‘fine’_. A man working through to shock of having thrown his own life away was incapable of wording an appropriate answer.

Simcoe, however, continued to ask between comments that had little conversational structure and which would have made little sense to Akinbode even had he been in full command of his cognitive resources.

Curry, he answered, after they had been escorted off the premises and asked never to return, was fine too.

Clearly, Simcoe was not. Noticing the bruising others were content to ignore he knew that it, whatever it was, had nothing to do with him.

Akinbode was concerned.

 

* * *

 

The restrooms at the hole-in-the wall Indian restaurant in the same strip-mall as the Walmart spoke to the pain and instant regret that Simcoe seemed to promise by ordering in Urdu. The man behind the counter mirrored and matched his teammate’s sardonic smile. Akinbode was ready to opt out of the ‘special menu’ when he witnessed Wakefield’s face twist -ever so briefly- into a look of absolute dismay. He had not seen the man exude so much raw emotion as this on occasions that would otherwise warrant it – his wedding, the birth of his child, missing a penalty kick and with it losing the league cup.  

Akinbode wondered what was being said. He wondered when he had last heard Simcoe really say anything at all, and if anyone else had taken notice. His insults had grown empty and uninspired as of late, answers to his questions – including the night’s refrain of ‘ _how you holding up?_ ’ – were met with vague gestures designed to veil disinterest. He hoped Simcoe was attempting to imitate Hewlett’s practiced distance - the very attitude Akinbode had tasked himself to emulate with every glance he made to his mobile throughout the evening.

In vain.

He was in agony.

Hewlett was aloof, Simcoe merely absent. Akinbode understood enough that he did not begrudge them the act; he resented, however, its duration.

He glanced at the half of their soccer team Simcoe had been able to rally for a short-notice road trip. His reservations took root. All of these men had been able to abandon their apathy enough to make a half-hearted show of their condolences. They were all disaffected. They were all in agreeance. They had been, it seemed, for quite some time.

Akinbode checked the phone again. Absent of alerts, he returned to the message he realised he had been reading in this friends’ eyes all evening. A code they had not intended for him to break.

They had all known this was coming.

He wondered for how long.

“You can’t honestly -” he heard Hewlett begin to protest after Simcoe paused at length only to arrive on the word _cholesterol._

“Oyster, that we are clear, when people accuse you of being an intellectual snob this is precisely the sort of behaviour they are referencing to,” Simcoe said lightly. “How should I know a word in my second language that I only learned hours before in my first?”

“I think it clear that is not my point of complaint but that you bring it up, given that the word is derived from Greek-” he started, aggravated and indignant as were his expected norms. Hewlett shot him a small, sorry glance which Akinbode met with a nod. He appreciated the honesty. It was curious when he paused to consider it – Hewlett knew how to command and control perception. He had more reason than anyone to maintain an appearance and yet this was the one he chose.

Akinbode had be ‘ _fine_ ’ for three hours when anyone asked and he was exhausted from it. He wondered what it was like constantly and continually be a number of untruths. He wondered if Simcoe knew or suspected and if that helped him anchor his general animosity. He wondered if he appreciated the target on offer to his loose cannon.

Hewlett seemed the only real shot he had left.

“I’m but trying to protect your lip from exposure to a spice that would surely prove torturous to you even if were it not split open. I’m defending your fragile frame from the wrath your” Simcoe paused and took a step closer to close the already small distance between them. Cocking his head to contain a cheeky grin, he continued, “Why your … fiancée would doubtlessly deliver should she discover that you disobeyed a direct order.”

“I think it curious that you find that I should be the one to feel emasculated by the fact that Anna landed a hit on you,” Hewlett provoked with equal acid as he gestured to the contusion under the captain’s eye.

“And I would ordinarily fault one for hiding behind a woman but if your aim at the shooting range attests to anything it is that you are truly outmatched in every conceivable scenario,” Simcoe replied, mirthless and menacing. “You are calculating Hewlett, I’ll give you that much. You’re calculating. Naturally then, it would stand that you are, at the very least … aware that you’d not stand a chance alone against me when you,” he paused to swallow his rising laughter, “when you can’t even so much as take out a bloody sheet of paper with a semi-automatic rifle and a sales clerk to help you steady it.”

At this even Akinbode entered into the echoes of laughter suddenly shrouding the small dining area. He has barely so much as smirked since arriving at Simcoe’s flat early in the evening in search of a drinking buddy, potentially finding four.

‘ _I broke things off with Abby_ ,’ he had offered to no one in particular.

Simcoe had responded far too quickly by announcing they would undertake what he imagined to be the American fashion of sorting through one’s grief. Hewlett, in a rare moment without a mask, agreed to and insisted upon the proposed course of action before Akinbode could stage a proper protest. It was as though they had been planning this manoeuvre for some time.

An hour later, he had found himself with half of his association soccer team at a shooting range in the Outdoor Sports Department of a Walmart Super Centre in New Jersey, drinking away the past decade with lukewarm beer from the establishment’s in-built supermarket whilst Simcoe challenged anyone to throw them out.

Initially, Akinbode had been grateful for the distractions he had been given until he realised none would absolve him of the mounting guilt of leaving the woman he could not help but to still think of as _‘his girl’_ alone with an expiring lease.

“It is the jacket and the shoes though, ‘innit?” Eastin said of Hewlett’s questionable attire as he helped Joyce push two tables together to accommodate the shooting party. “Right let’s take a run through. When I went to have a piss, I saw a man in the toilets shaving his legs over a urinal. There was a meth-head pleasuring himself with a stuffed animal, a battalion of elderly woman in motorized shopping carts stocking up on wine coolers and cake mix, which isn’t even to mention our esteemed captain getting into an argument with a bunch of farmers who, I suppose, wanted to actually buy a gun.” At this, Simcoe shrugged, offering a smile Akinbode thought to at least be genuine. “But you Hewlett?” Eastin continued. “You alone can be said to be the embodiment of the modern American mess.”

Under his tailored blazer, Hewlett wore the pink away-kit of the other Merseyside team – the one he loathed based on an allegiance – paired with denim shorts that fit him like breeches. He looked like an absolute fool, even in New Jersey. There was likely a story behind this, but Akinbode was willing to let it be. Enough was said by the fact that otherwise fussy Edmund Hewlett had come out without a thought to his vanity to hear him say _‘fine’_ and hope it was, or rather would be, true.  

“Congratulations on your successful integration,” Wakefield remarked with his typical torpor.

“I’d argue that successful integration would involve being able to hit your target in a country where the right the bare arms is always fodder for debate,” Simcoe taunted.

“I’ve not taken it m’self, but I’ve heard that shooting is a primary component of the US Citizenship Test.”

“It is, as a lawyer I can attest to it,” Akinbode replied to Eastin’s statement as he took a seat at the end of the newly erected banquet table, wordlessly inviting the others to do the same.

“What is the deal Hewlett, has it been too long since you’ve gone on a proper shoot on your family’s ancestral grounds?” Robeson asked in an intentionally poor approximation of Hewlett’s forced posh accent. “Or can you only take aim at pheasant when tea and crumpets with the Queen and PM are promised to follow?”

Hewlett choked, Akinbode presumed, on the offence he had taken. Crafted as the rest of his constant performance was, he could do nothing to confront his own pride when it was on the attack. Akinbode glanced at the clock on the wall hanging in the filthy, partially exposed kitchen, disappointed, then delighted, that it no longer kept time. He pulled out his mobile again in order to use its stop clock to see exactly how much Hewlett’s tick had been aggravated. No alerts. No replies. He was developing a nervous condition of his own.

“Ah … my family,” Hewlett, paused, “we never engaged … well you see. My father. That is, ah. This is rather, ah,” he stammered, raising a hand to rub his temples. “It is quite embarrassing. My father is a vegan, you see, he didn’t believe in such … escapades. That is … I’ve hardly ever held a weapon.”

“Managed to shoot your own horse though,” Simcoe muttered.

The laughter stopped. Conversation started abruptly and from all directions, most of it commentary on all this revelation explained. Hewlett, for his part, sat silent, looking ready to kill again just to watch something bleed. It was a pity, Akinbode considered, that the monument to the Second Amendment, the miniature museum of its modern interpretation, had closed at eight o’ clock. He check his phone again, deciding to shoot off another text if Walmart’s corporate policy prevented him from firing off anything else.

With this, he found himself the object of attention once more, hearing a chorus of objections over the light percussions his fingers made on the touch screen.

He took no heed of their calls for a ceasefire.

Akinbode was concerned.

He stared at the photograph of Abigail he had saved as his lock screen; taken on one of the rare occasions she had permitted him to stay the night. She smiled at him over her shoulder, her hair still covered in the silks she wore to sleep, comfortable, confident, content in a way he so rarely saw her. She had always hated that picture.

He would always remember her exactly as she looked that morning. He would always remember feeling exactly as he felt when he assumed there would be many more to follow.

Akinbode ran his index finger over the device to tell her for the twelfth time since storming out of the rented town house that she could stay with him until she and Cicero found another residence. That she could stay indefinitely. That they could work this out.

Her response had been - and remained - complete silence.

It spoke. He could not bear the sound.

 

* * *

 

By the time supper had arrived, Akinbode was confident that no one could tell if the swelling in his eyes was a reaction to of sorrow or spice. Simcoe ate the curry with comfort, Eastin with appetency, Wakefield with caution. Joyce, who had opted for the yellow variety -which the server called ‘ _white_ ’, simply ate dinner. Robeson, whose fondness of foreign meat, Akinbode assumed, extended only to ‘bangers’ and ‘toads in the hole’ had tried dipping one of his chicken nuggets in the sauce that had been offered to him before requesting ketchup.

Hewlett, perhaps owing to his family’s values, perhaps only to what Simcoe chose to name as concern for his well-being, ate only a salad with marked dissatisfaction. He commented that it was mostly lettuce to further mocking jeers of ‘ _Ah! But it is quite American! Refreshingly so._ ’ Akinbode tried to lose himself in the mindless conversation without adding to it.

He overhead in the light chatter something that reminded him of a conversation he had had with his reverend around the time of his confirmation. ‘ _Brotherly love_ ,’ Nathanial Tallmadge challenged him to consider in the context of a larger theological theme, ‘ _is misunderstood. It has nothing to do with comradery. When we examine The Bible, relationships between brothers are often marked by conflict and jealousy – in fact The Good Book tells us that the first murder was an act of fratricide. Can you remember why?_ ’

At twenty-nine, he no longer could. He wondered if it would not have served him better to have simply gone to church. Not only tonight. Akinbode questioned if it would have been better to have sung the Lord’s praise every Sunday morning for the past three years as opposed to having passed a ball with his present dining companions on a rented pitch. He studied their faces. Somehow, despite or perhaps due to various locker room conflicts, these men had become his family, his brothers-in-arms. He wondered if he loved them on some level and if he did, if the sentiment was more akin to Cain and Abel or to the popular definition that emerged in the Enlightenment and had been propagated by the bloody revolutions born from its doctrine.

He questioned if in essence the both conceptions spoke to the same envy he suddenly felt swallowed by. He did not want to speak of Abigail. He could think of nothing but her. He hated everyone at the table in that moment. Everyone who was putting forth a solid effort to heal his heart or at least distract him from his festering wound. It was not working, and it could not work because their lives had not been reduced to a door slammed in a fight. They all had lives they had yet to turn their backs on.

They had no bloody idea.

“Oh it actually gets worse, lads,” Hewlett announced as he removed his bespoke jacket, the only article of a designer suit, he told, which Anna Strong had not managed to ruin in the laundry. “Simcoe is the sort who would keep a medieval torcher device on hand for just such an occasion.”

“You give me far too much credit,” Simcoe smiled as Hewlett turned around, revealing the name on the back of the jersey. “The jean shorts I happened upon one day while passing through China Town, and yes,” he informed Hewlett, still without much inflection, “I bought them specifically because I knew their presence in my wardrobe would upset you. The shirt though,” he said, shifting his attention back to the masses, “mate of mine from school actually wore that thing ‘round unironically until Rooney transferred to United after two seasons with the first team. He gave it to me to burn, not wanting to destroy the Everton emblem himself, and I, having the proper sense not to touch it at all, let the thing sit at the bottom of my wardrobe for years. I was honestly surprised to find it still among my belongings.”  

Eastin held up a finger and, upon having found what he had been searching for, handed his mobile along to Simcoe who met its glow with a grin. He put his other arm around Hewlett’s bruised neck and shoved the device into the field of vision he forced upon the man with his grip. “I’m rather presently surprised that you could use it to get yourself featured on the People-of-Walmart site,” he chirped. “I suppose that is one positive of still having the relative height of a twelve year old at … how old are you now, Oyster? Every time I look away and then look back at you it seems as though another hundred or so of your hairs have abandoned their pigment.” Still clutching Hewlett’s head in a deadlock, he began twisting the ends of the smaller man’s too-long hair around his triggered fingertips. Akinbode wondered if this was intentional, if he meant to belittle with a caress, or - as with everything else he did with his hands when otherwise stimulated - Simcoe simply had no idea or control.

Hewlett gave him an awful look but made no move against him. Curled over his ears, his hair, which had whitened considerably since the stress of surviving a suicide, resembled a peruke. He looked like a ghost; rather, he looked like an unfit eighteenth century garrison commander held hostage by the mutiny of one man. Akinbode had to look away upon recognition of something he had once read with scorn.

“Oh I would feel right comfortable with that prognosis; I haven’t seen Simcoe take his eyes off you for months,” Wakefield asserted.

“Years,” Joyce corrected.

“Since you joined the team.”

Hewlett managed to free himself from Simcoe’s chokehold. “I suppose that is … rather accurate,” he agreed with audible guilt.

“I can but attest to it,” Simcoe concurred, seemingly unaware that his cold gaze remained fixed. “Frankly I wouldn’t mind seeing far less of you than I have as of late.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Akinbode asked mordantly.

“Yea … so our own Oyster here is no longer a virgin. Which is why I forced him to don the 2003 / 2004 Everton away kit.”

It was a poor choice of wording.

The silence that followed was quickly taken by various remarks of men pulled from their psyches by a sudden shared sense of sardonicism.   

_“You have some strange fetishes.”_

_“You all owe me money.”_

“There was a betting pool going on for this?” Hewlett demanded.

“How much would you have sold yourself for then?” Simcoe inquired. Still, Akinbode noted, not averting his attention from his mark. He wondered if this was conscious or deliberate, if his established norms were so aberrant that the two assumed they could be fixed and fitted into a cover with little effort. He wondered if this explained Hewlett’s nose and lip, Simcoe’s eye. He wondered if it worth it to take the time to explain that fist fights did not rapidly devolve into banal mockery on this side of the Atlantic.

He wondered if it was worth it at all.

He wondered when he had stopped caring.

“I … I wouldn’t,” Hewlett stammered. For once, everyone seemed to see through his façade. The man was to be had for the slightest hint of affection. Akinbode looked again to his phone, hoping for a beacon in the form of a blinking light. Maybe they were all so easy. Maybe that was what made sitting here listening to faux foes stage a fight so laborious.

“Then why even ask?”

“It seems as good a method as any to weed out the traitors among us,” Hewlett announced in a huff. “And you are, all of you, absolute serpents. You think we, he and I, together – ah, that we made love … to _each other?_ I come out here with a broken nose, Simcoe with a blackened eye and not one of you think to ask, ‘ _hey lads, alright then?_ ’”

“I afforded you every bit the attention your latest row could possibly warrant,” Wakefield replied. “I told you that if you lost a litre of blood due to those wounds it is likely that you are over medicated and I play golf with a cardiologist that I would be happy to refer you to.”

“Can you do that?” Hewlett blinked. “Write referrals for adults?”

“What adults? Hewlett, the reason no one asked if either of you were all right is because this sort of behaviour has become predictable. Seeing you over Skype this afternoon reminded me that it was Thursday and that I needed to pick up the dog from the kennel on my way home.”

“There is something to that,” Robeson thought aloud. “You always pitch your battels midweek so you’ll be over it by Sunday.”

“Strategic,” Joyce agreed.

“But dull for the lot of us,” Akinbode added. He found himself as incapable of feigning further interest as he had been in fabricating responses at the shooting range. Getting buzzed on piss warm beer while emptying one magazine after another inside of a mega store was the opposite of ‘ _fine_ ’ no matter how many times he said it, no matter who cared to ask. Eventually he had asked them all to stop. Eventually they did. Except for Simcoe. Who asked again.

This time, he declined to answer.

Akinbode took another bite. Eyes watering, he swallowed quickly and without chewing, and glared at his captain. There was a decided difference between enjoying spicy food and being dead to all stimuli. Simcoe belonged to the latter. He ate as if he failed to taste. He spoke as though he read from a script and kept forgetting what line he was meant to be on.

He wondered why it had taken him so long to notice, if he only did now because of Abigail’s book, because of the break-up he should have seen in the subtext long before he had. Simcoe smiled and continued speaking. High, haughty, with far too much pep and haste then the conversation should warrant. Akinbode hated the caution Simcoe become. He hated what devastation looked like when worn by survivors. He wondered if there was much left of the man himself to resent.

He recognized that had no logical reason to resent any of them.

He could not help but to do so.

They had no bloody idea what he was going through.

How could they? Each heart fractured and fragmented individually in response to how it had been hit. None of them had ever loved as he had. None of them had ever sworn off ‘forever and always’, yet everyone was wrestling other demons with the handicap of having come into contact with Dr John Andre. Though at the time neither he nor anyone present knew that their problems and personal short-comings were being exploited or how much blood stood to be shed as a result, Akinbode looked at shattered men and saw them as such.

Still, he resented them. He resented that his problems paled in comparison. He resented that despite this, not one of them seemed to know pain, or, at least, none were as naturally given to raw reactions. Maybe it was a cultural standard. Maybe he alone felt the weights of choice and circumstance.

Akinbode had just broken up with the woman he had spent a decade with, the woman who for the last half of it at least he intended to one day call his wife.

Wakefield saw children all day but hardly ever saw his own, working hundred-hour weeks to pay back his debts to Harvard.

Eastin had seen his transportation business dry up in the past year, his investments in city-issued taxi licences reduced to the value of an average lift on the Über App, something he was involved in a class action against, a suit Akinbode thought sure to fail. He would be financially ruined within the year.

Robeson needed legal recourse more than anyone else at the table. He had spent half his life on a commercial fishing boat, setting every penny aside, only to see his entire savings taken by the cancer that should have taken his life. When he could no longer cover COBRA payments for his insurance he had come on the rather inspired idea of staging a bank robbery with an unloaded rifle, knowing that if he was arrested and went to federal prison the state which had made it impossible for him to access affordable coverage would be obligated to cover his chemotherapy.

Ultimately, though unburdened by further medical debt, he paid a far too heavy price. Unable to move out of the halfway house he had been sent to because Robert Rogers’s threatened fire him from the construction job he supplied - the only one Robeson could find with a criminal record- if he should, he was bound in a form of slavery his court-appointed case-worker assured him was legal. It had been the source of constant argument between him and Joyce, who had been begging him to move in for the past two years.

Had been.

Joyce would be in Mumbai where the curries would be hotter or he would be made redundant come September when the IBM call centre he managed shifted overseas. Now the two just argued over Robeson’s drinking problem, which Akinbode did not begrudge him.

Hewlett had left a life of privilege and excess to live in a rented room on the other side of the ocean. He served some sort of self-imposed penance for what Akinbode imagined must have amounted to an unforgivable sin by protecting the interests of the few he found dear. Akinbode wondered if the man took any satisfaction from slipping into what he had heard were old habits on behalf of Anna’s pub, or in playing foe, foil and fall guy as needed for Simcoe.

Simcoe, whom, Akinbode was all but certain, had recently killed a man.

“Dare I inquire?” he heard Wakefield ask.

“Oh, after lunch yesterday I went to provide Hewlett with character testimony and ended up talking to an FBI interrogator about the time he stabbed me with a butter knife and I left him naked in the middle of the woods,” Simcoe peeped happily. The man, Akinbode decided, was completely insane.

“I love how you say that so casually. This is why no one among us is shocked or even interested when the two of you take to sex or savagery to sort out your differences,” Eastin muttered.

“For the love of -!” Hewlett threatened to explode. “We didn’t have sex with one another,” he shuttered. No one, other than Hewlett himself perhaps, had taken the accusation in earnest or would have much cared if their two teammates had in fact experienced a moment’s self-awareness. They probably would have been keen to ignore the matter if in fact they afforded it any merit. It was merely amusing for all of them to watch Hewlett, who otherwise shot for elegance and eloquence, flounder for words whilst throwing a fit. Not for Akinbode. Not when he had not put any money on it recently. Not when for whatever damned reason of love or hate or guilt the two rivals could simply not walk away from each other. Not when he had just walked out on the most important person in his life. He hated them. All of them. The enactors and the enablers like. Akinbode glanced at his phone.

“Simcoe simply walked in on me in the act and insisted that I pay the price he then set,” Hewlett swallowed, trying to regain his calm.

“And that is all you did?” Wakefield, a fellow Red, remarked on the jersey, paying no mind of the visceral damage his friend had endured. “You’ve lost your edge.”

Simcoe shrugged. “I found myself in the odd sort of situation in which -I confess you may be right- I often seem to find myself these days in which I was torn between wanting to high-five Oyster and beat the life out of him. I think after nearly two decades we arrived at a balance, wouldn’t you agree?” he asked, flicking the tip of Hewlett’s bandaged nose with his middle finger.

Akinbode did not.  

He tried to numb out their nonsense as he had tried to do all evening. He tried to lose himself to it to forget that Abigail was lost to him. The casual banter provided him with reprieve from the spotlight, from the empathy his friends tried to force upon him and from the contronym ‘ _fine_ ’. It should have given him base comfort if nothing else that his criminal cohorts were refined enough in their routine that they could convince a room of the people who knew them best that their respective arsenals were low on artillery and could excuse this light casualty within reason.

He wondered if this behaviour fit Mary Woodhull’s definition of normality.

He wondered how it became theirs.

He pressed a button on the side of his phone again to illuminate Abigail’s smile. She had yet to return his text. He continued to listen. He heard her reasons why.

The argument had started when he brought up his friend’s reactions to their fictionalized selves in an attempt to aid his own fight against the ways she had chosen to characterize him. Abigail put her hands on her hips and tasked him to provide her with an argument that Hewlett was not proud, paranoid and given to self-dealing; or, that Simcoe was not obsessive and deranged in a manner that manifested itself in an inexorable lust for violence. Akinbode inquired if she saw him as controlling, as domineering, as possessive. She asked him what he thought – to which he responded that he thought the sole individual to whom she had afforded any positive representation to was John Andre.

And then it was out.

And then it was over.

And now he saw in his friends that she had taken less licence than he had wanted to allow.

Akinbode wondered if in the course of their relationship he had been as blunt, forceful and given to lofty expectations as she had written him. He wondered if his novelized self ever felt as though he were in command in the post she had relented to him after another fight over the same work caused him to accuse her of adding to the racist sentiment that lingered in American culture after centuries of slavery and seggrigation.

He wondered if his character ever had it in his mind to simply walk away from a situation he saw that he could not control.

Akinbode wanted to leave immediately and without explanation.

“I am bored of your standing rivalry as a whole. It was more interesting with a clear and defined point of contention. Hewlett, I assume then you had a taste of the untouchable Anna Strong?”

“Had a taste? Sir, she is to be my wife.”

“Simcoe, how do you let him get away with that?”

“Well I, I’ll admit my interests shifted upon seeing what a relationship with the future Mrs. Hewlett would actually entail. Our own Oyster here is the primary suspect in a high profile murder investigation and she is demanding that he break with his vices when he needs them most. As for me, I’ve sought and found my jollies elsewhere.”

At this, everyone cheered, whistled and wanted details.

Everyone - that was- except for Jordan Akinbode.

“Mary Woodhull?” he snapped. “Do you really think that something appropriate to discuss on the day I found out that the woman I’ve been with for ten years, a woman I spoke for in all but name, was fucking her boss all the while?”

Simcoe blinked. Akinbode had never know his eyes to shut. “No I-” he started. Maybe it would have been an apology. He did not want to hear it. Any of it. Not anymore.

“And Hewlett, do you really think I want to hear about your brush with happiness for a second? How do either of you think it makes me feel -that is makes any of us normal blokes feel - that you can waltz in, set your eyes on not a girl but rather on the paperwork a marriage would provide you with and find eternal happiness from _that_?”

Hewlett rose. Akinbode met him. Leaning over the table he continued, “I have been trying, working, fighting and bleeding for a decade to obtain the same ideal that was suggested to you two nights back. _‘Why don’t we marry for love?’_ Maybe run tell Anna that that is the capacity you truly lack. I always thought the dick thing was pseudo-symptomatic to some degree but you can’t well cover for the fact that you don’t have a heart. And John?” he returned, “Bragging about banging a married woman with a little kid? Honestly? You both make an absolute mockery of the intuition or marriage! Yeah, keep thinking its ‘ _fine_ ’ to go about as you do; thinking that you are only hurting one another but at some point, at some point you are going to need to remove yourself from this concept that the whole damn world is restricted to the spaces you occupy in one another’s. You’d better hope to God that your paper-brides, illicit lovers, that fucking anyone else is still around when you do. If you do. We are all bored of this charade and let there be no doubt between us  - _I know what you are trying to achieve from it_.” Hewlett’s jaw descended slowly. Simcoe stood. Akinbode spoke.

“It is bullshit that either of you can find something akin to love. The world doesn’t revolve around you two, the longer that people are around you the clearer that becomes.”

He knocked on the table to say goodbye to the others and walked outside to order himself a ride back to the city. He would not show up for Sunday’s match or any of the ones to follow for the rest of the season.

No one ever rang to check up on him.

Including Abigail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of notes this time, lovely faces, and not a lot of time, so let’s just get to it, shall we?
> 
> Penalty Kick: a type of free kick awarded when the foul occurs inside the offending player's penalty box (that square drawn in front of the goal.)
> 
> League Cup: The trophy given at the end of the season to the team who has accrued the most points (by the way - 3 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss.)
> 
> Merseyside (Derby): I am assuming that as period drama fans you love history and hate sport so I will try to make this quick, the Merseyside Derby is the longest running in the Prem, dating to 62/63. Half of the rivalry is based on the club’s proximity to one another, they are on opposite sides of the same street. Until the mid-eighties it was called the ‘friendly derby’ and complete fan segregation was not enforced but then things got really out of hand. Today the fixture (Liverpool vs. Everton / Everton vs. Liverpool) sees more red cards than any other match in the Premiership.
> 
> (Wayne) Rooney: One of England’s most famous footballers. He began his career at Everton before moving to Man U where he had a very successful run. He is currently a reserve and I have heard rumours that he will retire at the end of this season. So an Everton jersey bearing his name would truly be “medieval” in football terms, in which 90 minutes can feel like 100 years if your team is down. I am obligated to mention the one thing you are required to know as a person of culture, he once banged a grannie. There is a song about it.
> 
> United: here, Manchester United
> 
> First Team: Professional soccer clubs have multiple teams, the first team is the one that plays in the highest league, the second is typically associated with younger players from the academy.
> 
> Away Kit / Colours: When a professional soccer team plays at home (in their own stadium) they wear the standard uniform – the one you know from promotional photographs. When they play an away game (at a different stadium) they wear a different colour jersey. If this is too similar to the home team’s colours they have what is called a third kit. Here, Everton’s home jersey is blue and their away jersey is pink.
> 
> The Reds: another name for Liverpool Football Club (and their supporters.)
> 
> Bangers and Toads in the Hole: English sausages and I am sorry for ruining your appetite. You deserve better euphemisms.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Comments and Kudos are always warmly received.  
> XOXO - Tav
> 
> Up Next: The Tactical Foul


	24. The Tactical Foul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary attempts to comfort her new friend through heartbreak while she herself suffers the emotional consequences of sleeping with an accomplice. Hewlett offers unsolicited commentary on the affair. The next morning, Anna finds how easily even the best-laid plans can go awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So lovely faces, I actually managed it - two updates in the span on a single week! With this posting, we are oh-so-close to the climax of this arc (thank whatever God you pray to, for heaven knows I am.)
> 
> As always, I have a few warnings before we start: light bondage, asphyxiation, questions of consent, extramarital intercourse, breakups, body image, jealousy, liability, legal speak, light references to mathematics
> 
> And, as always, I hope you enjoy!

-Thursday Evening-

Mary Woodhull was enamoured until she came to recognise that what she envied was what she knew.

The woman before her spoke without remorse about the end of a relationship. She realised after he slammed the door that for her it had been over for some time, or so she told with indolent indifference. She had lost interest in him long ago. Now, after their latest fight, she knew that to mean that she had also lost interest in the idea of ‘them’.

This, Mary thought, was how her husband must think of her.

If, doubt echoed, he thought of her at all.

Mary wondered if she had ever thought of devotion before that afternoon. Their problem was not that Abe changed with time or that she had. It was that something had been wrong before there had ever been dilemma to define it.

The problem was that Mary Woodhull loved her husband. The problem was that this thought had first truly occurred to her whilst she was giving herself over to the temptations of another man.

She had shouted Abe’s name whilst John fucked her over her desk, his calloused hands quick to cover her mouth for the offence. She gasped for air. She grasped for certainty. She remembered how she felt during their walk along the dark Setauket side-road, made bleaker by the bare, twisted limbs of the trees that lined it - rejecting spring as they stretched from the rotting leaves they had shed in autumn and reached to join the blackness of the sky. Made bleaker still by the body they both had expected to find in the bar’s basement where they had left it, still wrapped in a bloodstained tarp and awaiting its disposal.

Mary had been terrified then.

The man who had walked a few paces ahead of her seemed to cast a shadow without light to aid him. He seemed to create the darkness that covered, distorted and consumed. He seemed then to belong to it. Beneath humming florescent lights, however, he seemed broken between angry and absent. Mary wished her original fears had instead manifested, for John’s sake if not her own. She imagined he might be in a better place if he had killed her before their sins had taken on this shape.

She could still feel him inside of her as she shifted where she sat. Crossing her legs out in front of her, she felt his member impale her once more. Theirs had not been anything like sex with her husband, to which she suspected memory of being far too generous. John Graves Simcoe fucked as he fought, and Mary questioned if there had been much of a difference in what they had done together. That afternoon he had bent his long frame over her desk, kissing hard as he pinned her shoulders to the large calendar that covered the solid mahogany – strong enough to support them both. He unzipped her skirt as he slid her towards him, the garment sticking to the same plastic frame that grabbed at her desktop, shoved up to her waistline as she spread herself for him. She wondered if he had done this before. No, she decided. This was all about her. Until it wasn’t. Until she let him know in a single word that for her it was about someone else. Someone absent. Someone enshrined.

John became vicious. It was better. It felt honest. Punishing. Gratifying. Mary let herself embrace the frenzy of his reminder of exactly who he was, a man whose morals conflicted with the moments that had come to define him. His hands slid from her treasonous lips down to the base of her neck. His fingers failed to dance as they deprived her of air, growing tighter around her throat as each angry thrust sent tremors through her. Mary mouthed his name. He released her from his hold and told her to scream it. He did not seem to hear her when she did.  

John was looking at a photograph of her husband on the wall; at the man she wished he was - despite having long wished that her husband was someone else. Some better version of himself. Someone altogether different. Mary pulled at her lover’s tie - asphyxiating him, forcing him to face her, to face himself. She used the means of bondage to pull herself to his lips, which tasted of his acid tone. He told her not to stop; he wanted to be as deprived as he felt depraved. She spit and watched him fight a smile as her saliva trickled down his cheek. Mary tightened her grip.

He finished shortly after she had begun to choke him once more. Afterwards he said nothing as he pulled up his trousers, tucked in his shirt and buttoned his blazer. He returned the photograph of Abe and Thomas - which she had turned over to reassure him when she herself had been sure - to an upright position. Mary began to cry. John wordlessly offered her a handkerchief but made no move to comfort her further, perhaps unwilling, perhaps unable. The two walked back to his apartment building in silence as deathly bleak as the night when they had expected to bury Benedict Arnold. John broke it when they reached his block to tell her to run home to her husband. Mary responded that if Hewlett was still upstairs and injured she did not want to leave him exposed to all of John’s misplaced resentment, realizing in her companion’s posture that she was only making it grow. She, in truth, had forgotten about her housemate and the secrets that he kept until they reached to corner.

She had no idea why she had followed him and so she found herself lost.

Mary Woodhull felt guilty. She had betrayed her vows; she had betrayed the idea she had of herself. John had fucked her hard enough to end her fantasy of fleeing her loveless marriage. To stop her from imagining her marriage to be loveless. For she loved her husband. The problem was that he did not love her.

 _‘Do you think love is always one-sided?_ ’ she asked as he unlocked the door to his flat, cautioning her again to return to Whitehall by evoking her husband’s name. He refused to look at her as he had since she’d first spoken it. Since she screamed _‘Oh, Abraham!’_ in his arms.

 _‘I should hope so,’_ he replied without inflection. _‘Otherwise it just turns to hate.’_

When he opened the door to find two lovers tangled in his sheets, there was little question to which of them he might be referring. Mary lingered, lost in a lie. As he walked in ahead of her, her heart broke open, revealing to her that underneath its desperation and deceit, she had genuine feelings for him – conflicting, yet very similar at their core. 

With a name, a word that had meant nothing until she spoke it, she had betrayed him as well.

 

* * *

 

“I am not sad that things ended,” Abigail explained to all those who had gathered on the canopy bed in the middle of a rented room barely big enough to contain it. “I am sad about the way things ended. It’s not about John Andre, you know? It wouldn’t be even if I’d actually had fantasies about him that came even close to mirroring those Jordan clearly has about the two of us having engaged in. It is just about him and me personally and he will never fucking understand that now. He just going to go back to objectification and expectation and thinking that is love when it’s not.”

It was the only sort of love Mary knew.

It was _‘enough’_ , as Abe had put it the night before. She wondered how long it would continue to be. She wondered if it was already over for him, if he was waiting on her to slam the door. If he had, in fact, never indulged himself in the ways she imagined and accused him of – in younger, prettier, taller girls with tanned skin free of cellulite and stretch marks, tight in all the ways she had been before childbirth had left her sexless. Abe swore to her, God, and anyone he thought might listen that the life of an aspiring musician was far less glamorous than she imagined. She should come to one of his gigs to see him standing in the corner of a nameless bar that pretending to be a stage, usually in front of a small audience of burly, bearded truckers who only ever asked to buy Robert a beer.

She should come, he said.

He was innocent, he swore.

Mary continued to check his phone, never discouraged from her doubts by a lack of evidence, never satisfied with his honesty.

She was shamed by the speculum she now saw.

Abe was Abigail in every way. He was an artist whose partner discouraged his pursuits; he was also, as Anna’s best friend narrated in a story that Mary had heard a hundred times before with a different cast of characters, seemingly guiltless when seen outside of the constraints of their marriage chamber.

Abigail Ingram had not slept with her boss. Two years ago at his wife’s annual Hanukah party, he had kissed her cheek and she had turned her head just enough for his lips to meet hers. That, Abigail told the group of women who had convened to comfort her, was as far as she ever went by way of betrayal. That was all she confessed to in argument. Jordan imagined there was more to it. Mary yielded him no great sympathy but understood him all the same.

“Do you know what the worst part was? He accused me of writing a favourable portrayal of Andre in this series of short stories I publish over Amazon.” Aberdeen’s eyes widened. Anna bit her lip. “I write Andre as a self-centric womanizer who is aware of but unwilling to do anything about a crippling drinking problem and will step on or sleep with just about anyone in an aimless search for success,” she explained to Mary. “I’ve afforded that man no special treatment – society has. How damaged is our cultural mentality that such a character is received positively, while the girl I based on Anna, rather on the rumours surrounding her, is considered a whore?”

Anna and Mary shot one another a sideways glance.

Before Abigail arrived with a bottle of bubbly after dropping Cicero off with a friend, before Aberdeen had put Thomas to bed, the two had been lying where they now sat, the TV on – louder, than it otherwise needed to be in order to mute conversation, as Anna flipped through a few manuals Mary had taken from the judge’s legal library. She asked Mary repeatedly to reiterate parts of the story she had told on John’s balcony earlier in the evening until Mary said she felt like she was already on trial. It had been a joke. Anna did not laugh. She continued to thumb through the text, seeking from it legal refuge they might all need should any aspect of tomorrow’s plan go awry.  

‘ _It won’t,_ ’ she tried to assure them both. _‘It can’t.’_

But it could. And though it remained unspoken, they both recognized that Anna, who was taking the larger risk, had little hope of reward. Anna, whom Mary had called whore the evening prior. All of her convictions about the woman had altered earlier over the course of a single conversation. Mary anguished over every unkind word she had ever spoken to or about Anna, over the reality that the two of them had ever stopped speaking.

 _‘I wonder if I could have been as good as you,_ ’ Mary said, not specifically in reference to New York and Federal Law.  

 _‘Better,’_ Anna assured her, squeezing her hand. _‘I became a lawyer literally today. I’ve been working at a bar full time since I graduated law school, keeping various LSAT prep books behind the counter and eyeing them on occasion to give the impression that I was deep in revision. I failed at this. If I seem good, consider it is only because I have been pretending to struggle with the material for so long. But you? You would be a senior partner somewhere prestigious by now.’_

With Anna’s background, she would have been one shortly upon graduation had she so wished, but she had instead been wilful enough not to sacrifice her dreams for the sake of convention. Just for people. People undeserving of her grace. People like Hewlett. Like John and herself.

 _‘You’ll have to teach me how you got the place so clean when I reopen,’_ she later laughed. _‘If I reopen. Maybe I can get above a C from the Department of Health.’_

 _‘I was a straight A student,’_ Mary said. It was not conceit. It was regret. Anna seemed to hear it. She pushed the book she had open between her and Mary and began to explain what she was looking for and how they could best utilize this to ensure their liberty remained intact.  

It was sweet. It was sobering. Mary saw once again how similar their situations were. Anna was a Green Card to Edmund; Mary had been a pregnancy test to Abe. They were both trapped by actions not of their own, which they could not otherwise condone.

 _‘It will never stop, you know,’_ Mary said. _‘I’m married to a man like the one you are about to wed and it will never stop, this. He is always going to needlessly get himself into trouble, he may try to calm your fears but he will never willingly heed your advice.’_

 _‘He is a good man, Mary,’_ Anna said, slightly pained.

_‘I’m sure he is. Please … understand, I am not saying this to be cruel or patronizing. I just don’t want you to end up where I am, in a room with no exit.’_

_‘I was talking about Abe. And it’s not too late, Mary. You can still study. Once we solve this problem we can figure out all the others.’_

She wondered if Anna knew or had guessed how far she and John had taken their aphrodisia in service of an alibi.

 _‘Do you think all problems have a solution?’_ Mary asked, already having arrived at an answer.

 

* * *

 

Hers did not.

But Abigail’s did.

She needed a place to live but was unlikely to find something suitable within her price range by the time her lease was due. Mary and Aberdeen had both already offered Whitehall, but when Mary went to speak to her father-in-law about offering her new friend a lease, he had been unrelenting in his insistence that she submit to a rigorous two-month application and screening process, sour that William Smith’s daughter had _‘snuck’_ under his roof. Sour that he had no legal grounds on which to evict her.

Richard Woodhull had shown his hand. Anna’s alcohol induced ire showed Mary how she might yet play it.

“What the actual fuck is that supposed to mean, Abby?” Anna snapped. “If you have something to say to me then -”

Abigail leaned forward from the pillow on which she was inclined, “You let men use you, Anna. When you were with Selah you did not for a moment think you were the only one and you knew he wouldn’t give you anything except this idea that you were worthy and worth wanting – feelings that should come from within. I’d say it is the same with Edmund but you’d take everything from him without remorse and call it love.”

“You have a lot of nerve to judge my love life right now,” Anna replied – harder, Mary assumed, than she intended.

“I’m not judging you. I’m happy for you, if this is really what you want. But the fact remains that you don’t know him the way I do.”

Mary recognized Abe once more. She saw that Abigail, who could speak of her life without connecting to it but addressed what she saw as her friend’s problems with heightened concern. She seemed to know of something she could not relent. Mary wondered briefly if she was referring to Glasgow - if Hewlett or Simcoe had, at any point, relayed their story to this Jordan and he in turn had betrayed them to his then-girlfriend.

It was something, Mary thought, that she herself might do for a moment’s attention.

“From a medical chart?” Anna gaped. “How can you afford to be so judgemental?”

“How can you afford not to be?” Abigail pleaded.

“Because I am in love with him!” Anna defended.

“That is your tragedy.”

It was, Mary quietly agreed. To love was to be damned. Mary did not think Abigail envious of Anna’s predicament, and imagined that if she knew all that it entailed they would be having another argument entirely. Anna was diving head first into a high-pressure career no one but she, John, and Edmund knew she did not want in order to support her fiancé though his second attempt at defending his thesis. Mary knew from experience that dreams disconnected as soon as they were put on hold. It was not fair. Anna was by all accounts excellent at manning and managing a bar and if that was what she wanted to do she should not have to put on a suit because a man over thirty could not hold down a full time job.

And that, Mary considered, did not even touch on the clear signals Hewlett sent that his friends were far more important than they should have been at this stage in his life. But then same could be said of Anna. Of John. Of Abe. Of Abigail. Of everyone but her. Mary Woodhull had no friends. That, she knew, was her tragedy.

She looked up from her nearly empty glass of wine and noticed Aberdeen had turned her attention from Blair and Serena to the real-life best friends suffering love and heartbreak against a Manhattan backdrop. She was looking to her for help.

“I’m sorry,” Anna retreated, “I’m not taking sides here, I’m not. But I am hurt by many the ways you chose to describe me.”

Mary cleared her throat.

“Listen. Anna, go down stairs and get us more wine. Richard will ask you what you are doing in the kitchen. Tell him how upset you are about mean things Abigail said about you and Edmund. And about your father, why not. Tell him that you can’t say anything because she just broke up and is probably more upset then she is letting on, not having a place to live and all. Hopefully, she will move far away. Put the idea in his head that her presence is making you miserable. He will appreciate that. Then we will get Edmund, who is high on his shit-list for the time being, to say the same thing when he gets in. Tomorrow I will get up early, make breakfast, have another talk with him about Abigail and Cicero. He will probably wave the deposit and let you store your things in the double garage just so that he make Edmund park his precious sports car out in the weather and announce to Abe - without having to speak to him - that he can’t have band practice there anymore. He is petty like that.”

Aberdeen clapped.

“If that is how you want to sell the lease to your husband’s father I am not sure -” Abigail started.

“Oh, he will be in Albany come Monday for court. You needn’t worry.”

“No. Just me,” Anna said. “I have an early morning,” she sighed as she got up. “And I think you all have had enough wine.” She took off her soon-to-be husband’s thick rimmed reading glasses, threw a wrap over her bare shoulders, put on slippers and left.

 

* * *

 

Whilst Anna was in the main house and Aberdeen otherwise preoccupied with a dated teen drama, Mary and Abigail spoke. They came from similar backgrounds. Mary had grown up in foster care, Abigail’s mother had kept it together just enough to not have her daughter taken away, only to kick her out when she discovered she was pregnant at fifteen. Abigail had gone to live with the staunch Republican Shippen family due in part a political ad campaign; Mary had married into the Woodhulls because Richard insisted that his only surviving son _‘do the right thing’_.

But Abigail, she thought, was stronger. Stronger than herself, stronger than anyone else she knew or could think of. Abigail still worked towards her goal of being a novelist despite the pressures of being a single mother with a fifty-hour workweek. Mary looked at her like felt that she objectively had no reason to complain. She had a husband, a home, an au pair. She was inadequate by comparison.

“I can’t believe that anyone would ever idolize me;” Abigail laughed for the first time that night. “Anyway, everything is relative. I wish I had the ties that you do. All I have is my son and myself.”

“You have friends.” Mary commented, recognizing the acid in her tone to be envy.

“So do you. Anna can’t stay mad. Ever. Aberdeen here,” she tapped the girl who remained hypnotised by the ostentatious on-screen wealth, “worships you. And I have little choice but to consider you a friend, drinking your wine as I am.”Abigail winked. Mary smiled.

It had been twenty minutes. Thirty more would pass before Anna remerged.

 

* * *

 

“Sorry,” Anna said returning with Riesling. “We had a little talk, Judge and I. About my _‘whoring’_.”

“That sounds promising,” Aberdeen mused.

“Anna you know that is not what I think of you,” Abigail apologised.

“Yeah well,” Anna lamented as she removed the cork, “apparently Richard thinks I can do better, too.”

Mary wondered if he was on any new drugs and if he still left his medicine cabinet unlocked now that Hewlett had blocked her from abusing his. Hewlett, who she realised, she had come to esteem as an individual – absent, of course, from the ways in which he had manipulated her once-and-current housemate into helping find Senator Arnold and hide the circumstances that lead to his disappearance.

Mary studied Anna as she spoke, her wide, dark eyes emitting light as the danced around the other girls and their wine glasses. In the past two days, Anna Strong had moved into enemy territory, lost her job, watched as the love of her life was arrested for a heinous crime he could not have committed, nearly lost him once more upon his release while trying to protect him and prove his innocent to Tallmadge. She had discovered blood on John’s clothing, after he had already spilt quite a bit of Edmund’s, and she was still able to accept them all despite their flaws. She offered to help.

Mary recognised she was using her just as Edmund was. Just as she used everyone who entered her life. She choked on the memory of John, deaf to everything after hearing her husband’s name spring from her lips.

“You alright?” Aberdeen asked.

“Just swallowed the wrong way,” Mary answered.

Anna continued relaying the belittling, sexist comments Richard offered her, saying that she could not wait to surprise him in Albany next week. He would not be free from her there, either. She apologised to Abigail saying once more that she was not taking sides, she just needed a job and Jordan offered her one.

“I don’t care,” Abagail claimed, the melodic character of her voice dropping every time Jordan was so much as alluded to. “I mean I do, Anna I think that is great for you. I think it is about time you moved on with your life and your career. I think it is good that you are still friends with Jordan and I’d never expect you not to be. I mean, you are going to feel like you’ve been sent to a prison ship working for him but,” she stopped. “I really shouldn’t joke like this. He is a good man. He just never transitioned from Mr Right Now to Mr Right and I should have ended things earlier. Now nearly a decade has gone by and I feel nothing about the break up.”

Mary wondered if Abigail was lying for her sake or theirs.

“Maybe you are in shock,” Aberdeen offered. “I’m in shock.”

“I’m not even surprised. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. Moving in with him. I never wanted to; it just felt like a logical progression. It felt like that would be enough. I would like to say I am better than this but here I am - a little disappointed that a ridged, cantankerous old man doesn’t think my best friend is enough of a harlot to offer my son and I quarter,” she laughed. Then she cried. Then Mary joined her. Then Anna. Aberdeen joined the hug but not the sobbing. They remained in each other’s embrace until Abigail’s phone rang again. The twelfth time she refused to answer.

 

* * *

 

“You know what I could really go for?” Anna said as she poured the last chips Abigail had brought with her into a bowl. “Ice cream. Probably the last thing I need but …” she trailed off as she reached for her own device, presumably to text Edmund.

“It is a break up tradition, isn’t it?” Mary said. Anna nodded and grinned at the shared memory of countless twenty-something who had passed through their dorm. Of the well-stocked mini fridge with half eaten pints of Ben and Jerry’s, labelled not with the girl’s names but with post-its describing the events that inspired them to end things with their latest lover. _‘I missed you,’_ Mary mouthed. Anna mutely returned her words while Abigail spoke.

“I wouldn’t know; I’ve been with the same guy for nearly a third of my life. I should have eaten much more ice cream. I think,” she paused to agree with herself. “Loads more.”

“I’ve never dated,” Aberdeen confessed. “But I can run down and check if we ‘ave any. Not that any of you ‘ave to go again”

“We don’t, and don’t start. Dating that is,” Mary cautioned her. “Men are not worth the drama.”

“True, Anna said. “I used to be as thin and pretty as Mary and … I mean, it is so weird, it is weird isn’t it? I knew I was getting fat but I did not actually realize that I had gotten there until I really started thinking about the wedding. It used to be my greatest fear and now that I know myself to have achieved it, I am like, oh hey. What is a thousand more empty calories? I am sure I can still room to fit them.” She slid off the bed and began striking poses, laughing all the while. Mary hope it was because she knew how ridiculous her claims were. Anna Strong was one of the most beautiful women she had ever laid eyes on. She had thought so at eighteen, she thought so at twenty-seven. She could neither believe nor accept that the woman she had long half-considered a rival thought the same of her and indicated as much with a roll of her eyes.

“Girl, I know,” Abigail agreed, “Jordan started dropping hints that he was getting ready to propose last Christmas and I swear I looked in the mirror and I was suddenly 10 years older and twenty pounds heavier and here I am eating you out of house and home. Tell Eddie Hew to pick up some cookie-dough on his way back.”

“Neither of you are fat!” Mary gaped. Abigail and Anna both laughed. “Honestly, I would kill to look like either of you.” She meant it. Mary had, after all, killed for less.

“Says the only woman who manages to have a kid, spend half a decade with a guy and still be high-school skinny.”

“I love you for saying that, Anna, I do, but I swear it is not the case. Look how much loose skin I have,” she demanded, lifting her tee-shirt to her navel. “Okay, I am on the low end of the yo-yo right now, but what is the point? My boobs always abandon ship way before my thighs or my belly and it isn’t as if my husband notices either way,” she paused, the playful mirth leaving her. “At all. It is not like my husband notices me at all.”

“I am sure he finds you beautiful. I spent my entire freshmen year trying to look like you and the past two days – really, despite all of the other stress I have been under – feeling like I have failed at life itself just looking at you. Abe just … he doesn’t say those kinds of things. He never did to me either when we were dating in high school.”

“Because he doesn’t think them … about me anyway,” Mary insisted. “Do you know when he last paid me a compliment?”

“Take it as an excuse to eat more ice cream,” Aberdeen offered.

“I did,” Mary blurted out. “I did. This afternoon. At my office.”

Aberdeen shrugged. It occurred to Mary that the non-native speaker missed the euphemism. She wished that had been the case with Abigail, with Anna. Especially with Anna.

“Is that why …” she trailed off before whispering to the Saviour, abusing his holy name several times before stating what was already obvious. “Oh, shit, Mary. That really … that complicates things.”

Aberdeen’s jaw fell, suddenly conscious of the conversation she unwittingly incited. “Does this mean you will get a divorce?” she asked in horror. It was not a value judgement, Mary told herself, it was her au pair’s way of inquiring if she would continue to see Robert Townsend periodically. Still, it seemed the girl expected an answer. Mary bit her lip. She had none to give. It occurred to her for the first time that Abe could now well be the one to walk out on her. Tears rushed her eyes.

“You don’t need a man,” Abigail said forcefully, putting her arm around her. “But if you want two, you shouldn’t worry about judgement or condemnation for something a guy would be applauded for. I got you. We got you.”

“I got you, too.” Mary answered. She rested her head on Abigail’s shoulder.

Anna reached for her phone.

“Please don’t,” Mary started.

“If you think I can’t keep a secret … No. Edmund just wrote me back, he says he has to stop at a petrol station because he is not allowed back into Walmart.”

“Walmart?” Aberdeen asked and the same time Mary inquired what petrol was.

“The one in New Jersey has an indoor shooting range in their sports section,” Anna answered. “It bothers me on multiple levels that John knew about it. That that is how he lets off stress, or thinks Americans do. Or both.”

“I guess it is better than a strip club,” Abigail muttered.

“Oh Abby -”

“I don’t need a man. I don’t need for Cicero to be exposed to men like Jordan. I know you all think am too protective but you were not there,” her voice broke and she began to weep. “You weren’t there you don’t know. It was awful. He was awful!”

“We are here now,” Anna said. “And I am so, so sorry that you are hurting like this.”

Mary wondered how genuinely she could possibly mean that. She hardly socialized, but she heard enough of Anna’s name over the past few weeks to know that the girl had been slandered as a whore -possibly due to the surprising influence of Abigail’s online publication- when she had been nothing but loyal and committed to the man she claimed to love. Yet Anna, clearly, did not resent her for this. Mary herself had walked out on Anna six years before, had left her alone with a lease that had ruined her credit. She had suspected the absolute worst of and from this woman who seemed to bare her no malice, who did not judge or begrudge her for anything in their past or present.

Mary could see why John had been in love with her.

 

* * *

 

When Hewlett arrived an hour later with four pints of Ben and Jerry’s, she could see why he loved him, too. Suddenly she felt wanting for friends. She thought of how mean she had been, how little she deserved the sympathy of anyone in the room, and looked at her boarder with tear-stained eyes.

“Ah … what, what did I walk in on?” the Brit stammered, his strange face twisting as he evaluated what he must have found a curious visual.

“Blair wants to be with Chuck but she wants ‘im to say _‘I love you’_ first and ‘ee won’t” Aberdeen brushed him off as she took the ice cream and distributed it, adding for clarity, “because men are stooopid.” Hewlett looked uncomfortable. Mary thanked God that someone had been paying attention to the scripted drama still playing loudly on Hewlett’s PC.

“Oh you … you were not kidding about wanting to do that then,” he said as he glanced at the television before his reddened eyes darted between Anna and Mary. He leaned over to give his girlfriend a light kiss, taking his glasses from where they now rested atop her head. “Give me uh, just a few minutes to shower and then I suppose … I suppose I will be downstairs if anyone should need me.”

“How is Jordan holding up?” Abigail asked hesitantly.

“Exactly as one would expect,” Hewlett answered, meeting her eyes with a fixed glare. “He went off and then walked out. Now he has his phone turned off but we have all found from experience that it is best to leave him to his own devices in this sort of situation. It is how he behaves on the pitch every time the ref makes a bad call.” He emphasised the last two words by saying them slowly, gaze narrowing again.

“Strikers are divas,” Anna translated for Mary.

“So are defenders,” Abigail quipped. Hewlett frowned, his fine-lines sharpened as he inhaled deeply and dramatically to indicate offence. Mary wondered if he wanted for words or if Anna had fired a warning shot in the form of a look.

“I make a better translation,” Aberdeen declared. “All soccer players are little bitches. Nice legs, Eulett. Euh … what ‘appereded ‘ere?” she signalled to her own face with a circular motion of her hand.

Hewlett brought his to his temples.

“Right, yea … Edmund is still fine, Aberdeen …” he started. “Look, it has been a really long day. Let me just collect my pyjamas. I’ll shower and then join Richard and Abraham in the drawing room. As you would have me do.”

“Sweetheart, that’s not -” Anna said. Hewlett took something from his dresser.

“No, no, Love, I do understand,” he bent over to kiss her once more, whispering something with a slight smile. “Ladies,” he nodded.

Mary saw him glance back at Anna from the door to the bathroom. Though she had shifted her attention back to her friends, her presence seemed to give him such peace. For a moment, Mary found him charming, almost beautiful in the soft light of realised love. When he noticed her, he smiled awkwardly and turned away.

“Wait,” Mary said. “We do need you, actually. Can I have a moment alone?”

She hopped off the bed and pushed him into the small water closet. Hewlett turned the faucet on. The old pipes sputtered before they sang.

“It is not about that actually,” Mary hissed. “But as long you bring me on the topic take off your shirt.”

“Pardon? Madam, I say -” Hewlett’s eyes widened before shutting several times.

“I am going to hide it conspicuously under the mattress for Tallmadge and his team to find tomorrow,” Mary explained, her voice low and light.

“I don’t follow.”

“If you wore that to the shooting range you have cartridge discharge revenue on it and we have ourselves a red herring. It will get picked up in the sweep because it looks out of place –personally abhorrent and nefarious  amongst your other belongings; your bed has a Liverpool day-blanket on it and you have that heinous, metal _‘This is Anfield’_ shield on your wall. A rival jersey will stand out, especially if we are to make a half-assed effort to conceal it.”

“I’m impressed,” he almost smiled.

“I can google,” Mary answered, letting herself become rather taken with her natural talents. Forensics, she assumed, would have a field day searching for a weapon that was never fired, at least with relation to Arnold.

Hewlett swallowed and forced his peculiar lips into something she guessed he meant her to find reassuring. It had the opposite effect. Much like his fiancée, the war had come to him, though unlike Anna, he did not appear particularly suited to it. Overpowered and overwhelmed, he stood to defend abominable actions not of his own hand. Mary questioned what he possibly stood to gain from it. She found herself unable to accept her housemate as either a hero or a martyr despite having seen the past two days transform him into both.

The former price who refused to abdicate, the failed physicist who somehow forced himself to rise to the fight must also have something he hoped to win. Mary considered all he stood to lose, not yet recognising the care that had taken residence within her qualm.

“Ah, if – if that is all,” he licked the cut on his thin upper lip.

“Are you alright?” Mary inquired. “Edmund, if you are at all nervous …” she trailed off. They did not have a Plan B.

Without offering a direct answer, Hewlett turned to the mirror take out his contact lenses, explaining while his fingers fidgeted to find the thin, transparent plastic that his eyes were only red because he had left them in for so long. He adjusted his thick-rimmed Ray Bans over the bandaged bridge of his nose before looking for the salient within to quarter his preferred shields.

“Now then,” Mary said. Hewlett muttered something she did not quite understand before removing his glasses once more, struggling to stretch the neckline of the jersey enough the it did not brush his broken nose when he went to lift it over his head.

“Wait,” Mary said, pushing him gently away from the medicine cabinet. She took a nail clipper from inside and cut the collar, advising against Hewlett’s concerns that it really made no difference if the garment itself suffered a slight casualty. It was merely something else the police could busy themselves with while he and Anna gathered and analysed enemy intelligence tomorrow morning.

Hewlett looked horrible; his bruises darker, deeper under the florescent light than they had appeared when she briefly saw him bare in the fading sunlight that shown throughout John’s flat in the late afternoon. She could comprehend why her partner in crime had thought himself to have committed an act of amicicide; staring at Hewlett, she remained lost to the logic of it all. Though she understood that it was necessary that the police believe the blood of John’s hands belonged to a friend rather than a fugitive, she wondered what her housemate had said to mark him in that moment as an enemy.

Neither had told her that he needed only to speak her name to illicit such savage instinct.

“Ah … yes I, I had rather ought to start hitting up the gym … or the hospital,” Hewlett laughed, embarrassed of his physical condition and present state. “Is that all, then, Mrs. Woodhull?”

“It is Mary, please,” she corrected, “and no, what I wanted to talk to about, it is about Abigail. She needs a place to stay and I thought you might convince Father -”

“No,” he said sharply.

Clearly, he and Anna did not share the same politics. Mary wondered how much of a problem that might prove for the happy couple.

Hewlett, however, though stubborn, was good-natured at his core and therefore no challenge to break down. Mary explained that Abigail needed a place to stay, Whitehall had rooms free, but since the whole debacle with Anna, Richard was being quite particular about lease practices. She needed him only to tell her father-in-law how miserable that woman made him –

“To be fair she has written absolute slander about my friends and me,” he defended.

“To be fair you and your friends … Edmund,” she said bluntly, finding that she need not provide any more of an argument.

“Mary,” he matched her. He sighed. He swallowed. “Fine. I will talk to him but it will take me a while. I have something I need first to do.”

“Shower?”

“Well … that and. And,” he paused. When he collected his thoughts, his words were calculated rather than cold. This gave Mary a chill. She crossed her arms to mirror his stance.

“As long as I am being forced out of my own flat into the study, I intend to hide old papers, notes I have no need of any more photographs of people I barely know within various books throughout the library. It is important and imperative that Abraham sees me doing so. That way, he will insist that the police - who have a warrant for the whole house - make a sweep of that room.”

“What is the point?” Mary asked slowly.

“In the first order, I believe it will buy me more time tomorrow morning in the event that I require it for any unforeseen reason.”

“Are you nervous?” Mary asked again. Again, she received only obfuscation.

“Richard will surely protest to the search; if he is hiding anything sinister he will unintentionally direct police attention to it through posture, through whatever direction panic navigates his gaze.”

“I thought you considered him a friend,” Mary muttered as she took a step back.

“I did and I do, but last we spoke both he and his son made rather offensive remarks about the woman I intend to marry and insofar as I am concerned that is one friendship over should this behaviour continue.”

Mary considered herself quite fortunate that, at least in Hewlett’s presence, she had kept things civil between Anna and herself. She counted it a blessing that they had begun to repair their long forgotten friendship, for more reasons now than her own recognised loneliness. Though Hewlett’s features softened after his short outburst, she saw him anew. He was fit for battle if he believed it just.

She saw that his tragic downfall would be in his faith in man.

“Um … if anything should come out of it, if he is hiding anything that is, you’ll be … ah, Mary,” he stuttered. “Do you see? Must I say it aloud? The Woodhulls only hold sway when their name is in good standing. That is simply how power works.”

Divorce. The word he sought but would be damned to speak was divorce. She wondered how much John had revealed about her.

“I am not sure I am comfortable with the assertion, Sir,” Mary spat.

“Then I am not the one you should tell.” He paused. His face twisted rapidly from defence to disgust. He reached out to her, then, thinking, he retracted his hand before risking contact with her shoulder. He turned away. “Mary … I don’t,” he was barely audible yet he seemed to scream. “I truly don’t want to ask you this … but Simcoe has been behaving, that is. I suppose it better to simply be out with it,” he said slowly before falling into silence, made longer by the flow of water that filled it. “Were things between you entirely consensual? I don’t, I don’t think him capable, that is, but given your reaction to my scheme, given recent events, I think you may have been crying earlier before I came in and I – Christ Mary, if … if something happened, Arnold aside, we’ll need to involve the authorities.”

“Oh my God,” Mary gasped. Hewlett continued to speak. She neither heard no attempted to listen as she again traced John’s petulant post-sex behaviour back to her cry, this time guided by his implied line of thought.

“Of course it was consensual,” she interrupted after a moment; grateful for the running water she fancied had drowned parts of a speech she was happy to leave unheard. “I initiated it.”

Hewlett sighed, relieved. “I suppose this is all a tragic misunderstanding then. As long as you were not hurt,” he shook his head, judgement replacing worry, “I think you both should shake hands when next you meet and agree to move on without incident.”

“I have to call him.”

“I don’t think that best. I’ll speak to him tomorrow. I can handle Simcoe and his black moods. He is home right now, readying his flank for when we strike at dawn. Allow me to sort this once the battle has been won. Once he has lost his fixed point of concentration.”

Hewlett spoke as though he knew what tomorrow would bring, as though he did not consider that he himself would be the war’s most likely casualty. He spoke as though he had any idea what to say in order to console the blind rage of a broken heart tempered only by shame and self-loathing. No. Mary had to call him. She had to see him. But she had no words. Everything she felt, everything she ever might feel, had been reduced to and refuted by her husband’s name, a name that echoed in her mind.

And John’s.

“You don’t know. You can’t, Mr Hewlett … Edmund, I -” she stammered, not knowing her own voice or trusting it to speak for her.

“For all of our sakes you have to end this,” Hewlett insisted. “I can’t … I can’t control him with you leading him on like this. I need to … please, can you understand? None of this will work, none of this can work if he is fighting windmills when there are actual dragons to slay. I, Mary …  Simcoe, that is, he is my best friend - if I am being made to shame myself through honesty - but I, but he’s … the entirety of circumstances defining your connection ought to explain enough on their own.”

To this, she again took offence and sought to offer an explanation. “I’m in love with him,” she realised aloud. “I’m not leading him on; I am in love with him!”

Hewlett rubbed at his temples. He listened to the sound of the faucet, of the water that had grown cold. Mary listened to her own racing heart. Faster, louder than it had been when she had followed John through the woods, half-anticipating never to see dawn. She recognised the noise as fear. Perhaps, after a moment, Hewlett heard it as well. He mounted an attack in her moment of weakness.

“Ah -”

“I don’t appreciate the scepticism,” she said of words he had yet to speak.

“You are using him without regard, and I don’t appreciate -”

“I’m married,” Mary reminded sharply.

“What you and Abe have … that is not what a marriage is.”

“How dare you,” she said, though she knew him to be right. She would not and could not, however, allow the self-righteous little man before her, whose general disinterest in others had left him alone until middle age, who owed his wealth to divine right and his romance to whatever was left of it, lecture her on love.

As he retorted she considered in shame that equalled her enmity that he knew more about amity than she herself ever would. Hewlett was, and long had been, acting only as a friend. Sometimes friendship was sympathy, sweets and quips and quoting shows you all had seen a dozen times; sometimes it was calling out your comrades on their personal failings.

Hewlett was caring, she noted, though not particularly considerate. Again, she found herself concerned for Anna. Again, she found that all of her thoughts had manifested in the repetition of a single name.

Abraham.

“How dare _you_ , Madam. From my understanding of events, it was you who hit the senator and came up with a failed plan to hide his corpse. Simcoe is … protective. He can’t help it. You manipulate that for your own devices and then run and hide behind a legal status leading him to believe himself a bloody rapist, an affront to his morals. To society. He is  … dangerous, Mary. To all of us now. But that you already knew.”

“You don’t understand. You can’t,” Mary answered. She did not understand herself. “You are not married Hewlett. Not yet. It is a happiness that only exists from outside.”

“Don’t presume to lecture me about the institution of marriage when you feel imprisoned by it.”

“You know what it is to be in love with two people at once,” she said, evaluating as she spoke that he very likely did. Mary shifted, trying to bring him onside. She spoke calmly. She spoke as though she was trying to calm him, though, she noted, he had not once raised his voice. “I shouldn’t love either of them but I love them both and I hate myself for it. For what I said. For what it lead John to think of me, of himself. And Abe. I love my husband. You don’t understand.”

“You don’t know what is it to love,” he answered.

“What is it then?” she challenged.

“It is ah … it is charging into battle and feeling like you are coming home from war.”

“That from Anna or _The Iliad_?”

If Hewlett caught her mockery, her seemed to take it as a compliment. “A paraphrase of both I fear,” he smiled in self-irony. “Come. Cheer up, Mary. We will all help each other out of this. We will get through it. Simcoe will be fine by the morrow and tonight … I’ll talk to Richard about Abigail and … do you happen to remember her son’s name? Ah, no matter,” he stopped; stared at her for a moment and offered a short apology which she accepted while telling him he had, in truth said nothing to necessitate it. They were all under tremendous stress. And it was all her fault.

“No,” he said. “I was out with my lads tonight, something we’ve not done in quite a while, and I came to realise that sometimes, sometimes that is, life just gets ahead of you as it does us all. I was rather reminded of a verse from Homer’s Odyssey -”

“Please … please don’t, I’m already tired,” Mary tried to smile.

“Ah, very well. As you’d have it, Madam.”

Mary turned off the faucet and told him she better get back before all of the Ben and Jerry’s was gone. “I’m sorry again. About everything I’ve put you though, about what you are being made to do.”

“Nonsense. I’m certain that in my future role as a son-in-law I’ll be asked to look at the honourable District Attorney’s computer every time she needs something installed. I might as well get some practice it,” he smiled. “Ah … Mary. I know it’s, it’s not my place, and understand it is not just because of Simcoe that I say this -”

“Why do you do that?” she interrupted. “Why do you all call each other by last name?” Mary wondered if the distance was intentional, if it had existed before Benedict Arnold had met the bumper of the vehicle she had borrowed. She swallowed her guilt as she awaited a response. Hewlett blinked, taken off guard.

“It is um … with Simcoe and I it is slightly complicated and has to do with public school etiquette, but as a general rule - rather curious really - aside from myself, Rogers, Joyce and Akinbode, everyone on our team was christened as John. We call John Andre by both of his names because it is how I gather he introduced himself to those whom he met in AA. Everyone else gets specified by their last name for clarity and uniformity, respectively. Or we refer to one another by choice expletives and slurs. It depends on who we are playing.”

Oh.

“I can’t imagine you cursing,” she said. She could not imagine soft-spoken, bookish Edmund Hewlett going to bars or participating in blood sport either. She wondered if he enjoyed it, or, if this too, had simply been thrust upon him.

“Really?” he laughed. “Well then, speaking of absolute cunts, to return to what I was saying, when I finish speaking to Richard, my offer still stands. I’ll make a right proper foe of him if you would have me do so. Ah ... Quid pro quo, talk to Abigail. Tell her to call Akinbode in a day or two just to sort things over once they have both had a chance to calm down.”

Maybe she did not know him at all. Maybe he was in truth considerate, just not particularly kind.

“You’ll ruin your standing … in this house I mean, if you make to search worse on Richard.”

“He insulted my fiancée; I have no intent to stay here,” he paused, biting at his lower lip. “Use your window. It will be difficult to open another.”

“You don’t understand,” Mary repeated.

“About how Richard can be?”

“About … love. When this is all over, next year or in the fall, will you return to Scotland?”

“No. Setauket is Anna’s home and Anna is mine.”

“I hope you mean that.”

“I do. More than anything I do,” Hewlett smiled. When he spoke of her, he was beautiful despite his contusions, cuts, despite his chipped tooth and curious bone structure. She felt ugly by comparison.

“In the future, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t put her in danger of,” Mary reached for the faucet again, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Anna deserves so much more than to be strung along on your plan to save your enemy from himself.”

“I didn’t want to get her involved. I had hoped to shield her from all of this,” Hewlett stated.

“She doesn’t want to see you hurt,” she spoke from the pain of experience. “Listen, Edmund. Listen to your wife. She wants to protect you, too. Let her.”  

Hewlett nodded. Mary could tell she was being ignored.

“I’m pleased to see the two of you were able to reconcile,” he said.

 

* * *

 

-Friday Morning-

 

_> >Where are you?<<_

_> >Reconnaissance Faire<<_

Anna replied with a smile as she found dragon and princess emoji to accompany her message.

Mary Woodhull, or so WhatsApp told her, was typing.

Anna Strong stared at her phone for a few seconds more as she imagined her new housemate’s perfect French tips in a frenzied panic, furiously reworking her thoughts into refined words that would arouse no suspicion.

_> >I am beginning to loath puns.<< _

Mary answered at long last.

_> >John know that?<<_

_> >I haven’t the heart.<<_

_> >WHAT ABOUT EDMUND<<_

_> >???<<_

She did not have an answer. Anna stared at her screen for a moment until it went dark. She examined her reflection in the glare, wrinkling her nose slightly. Mary Grant – now Mary Woodhull – had re-entered her life on Tuesday afternoon. By Friday morning, she had fallen back into the habit of adhering to the beauty standards she set. Anna remembered and returned to figuring out who she was by process of elimination. She had long since crossed ‘runway-ready redhead’ off her list. Standing in stilettos and a borrowed suit that suggested sex in the boardroom with the way it clung to her curves, her make-up paradoxically light yet alluring, Anna Strong was not trying to be her beautiful former roommate; she was serving as a signal. As a spy.

Anna liked the look itself and the looks she was getting. Unfortunately, man’s shallow nature was the extent of what the morning had assured her. Mary was right in all that went unsaid. This was taking too long. Anna doubted how much longer she could continue serving as a distraction.

“Oh,” she said, realizing she had yet to answer her mother’s question, “its Mary. Looks like her plan worked out. Abigail has the place.”

“That won’t be weird,” the district attorney remarked.

Anna never considered she would find herself in a situation where her mother’s rather intruding comments would prove a welcome inclusion in their conversation. The two were getting dangerously close to the door at the donut shop, having waited outside on the pavement for the past two hours. This was taking too long. Anna feared that Edmund had been discovered. That her own cover was about to be blown. She could only hope that her mother mistook her now visible angst for embarrassment or hunger as the conversation allowed.

“Um,” Anna muttered. Her phone buzzed again as she slipped it into the Louis Vuitton Aberdeen -of all people to own such an expensive handbag- had offered to lend her the day before. Again, her eyes darted down the street as she continued her response. “I’m not taking sides. I don’t think either Jordan or Abigail expect me to.”

Nancy Smith lit a new cigarette with the butt of the one she had just finished. She was growing restless. Anna was surprised that she had yet to enact the nuclear option – in this case, insisting that instead of waiting for designer donuts they visit a chain. She had already brought up that Dunkin’ and 7/11 both stood between them and her office - the very office Anna was tasked to delay her from as long as possible.

For now though, her mother seemed preoccupied with passing judgement. Frankly, though grateful that the disapproval gave her grounds on which to place her discomfort and apprehension, Anna failed to understand what she had done to warrant it. She had invited her to breakfast, boasting that she got a new job at a prestigious law firm. This meant that for the next few weeks she would not be living with Edmund, saving her mother some face for as long as her fiancé remained a suspect. This meant that she was, at long last leading the life her mother had long lamented she was not.

But Nancy Smith did not seem pleased. Some people, Anna thought, simply never would be.

“I mean your new best friend, your old best friend -who is married to your high school sweetheart- all living in the same household as your fiancé, while you are going to be off in Albany with Abigail’s very recent ex. It is like a teen drama in its third season. Just when I am beginning to think you kids are growing up,” Nancy said sceptically after a long exhale. Anna crossed her arms, trying to ignore the sharp scent.

“Jordan is my boss now, Mom. It was never like that between us anyway. Abigail and Mary get along famously with each other … apparently. They are both apathetic towards Edmund at best.”

“And at worst?”

At worst? At worst she watched Mary wordlessly condemn Edmund for the flaws and faults she was too vain to own in herself. Abigail, meanwhile, had written him as one of her principle villains and had grown agitated at her own inability to convey to the now considerable audience something that was simply not there; neither Edmund Hewlett nor the figure she based on him was anywhere near as evil or deserving of criticism as she seemed to think him. The thought of a majority of faceless readers who had been charmed by the characterization of her soon-to-be husband made her smile.

“Are you reading _Turn_ by chance?” Anna asked. 

Her mother frowned. “Do you imagine I have time during a normal work-week to read self-published fiction online? I heard your father talking about it this morning on _The Gabfest_ though and when -”

“Oh God he didn’t!”

“Haven’t listened yet?”

“I um,” she answered in a small voice. “I’ve been meaning to but -”

“I know, love though I have for the father of my children, I still would have been more interested in Emily Bazalon’s take on _Zubik v. Burwell_. Still your dad-” she continued. Anna reddened. Her father was a famous court reporter who had apparently just told a far larger audience than the one made up of exclusively of legal nerds of which he was accustom about Abigail’s on-going periodical, thinking it political satire. Evidently, the regular hosts had agreed and echoed the recommendation he gave at the end of their popular podcast. Anna vowed to unsubscribe the second she got home.

“Mom you, um, you have to talk to him,” Anna swallowed. “To dad. For me. Abigail is writing that under a pseudonym and the whole thing is loosely about, well, me. It isn’t satire. It is just about people in Setauket and the rumours that take root.”

“Oh that is brilliant,” Nancy said, her dark eyes gleaming with the hatred she bore her hometown.

“Its not,” Anna answered flatly. “It is part of the reason she and Jordan broke up. He was angry that she made them slaves-”

“It is set in the eighteenth century, right?” he mother winced. “I mean that is historically accurate.”

“Mom!”

“Ignoring the sins of the past does nothing in the way of correcting their repercussions.”

She was right. But so was Jordan.

“I guess that is what she thinks too, but his critique goes deeper. Jordan’s dad moved here from Accra for university - Akinbode is a Ghanaian name which she didn’t bother to change -though she did so for her white friends - and he was in a way last night when I saw him over a line where his character spoke of being Maasai which he says perpetuates a misunderstanding that African culture is homogenous.”

“Didn’t he visit all of once for his grandmother’s funeral?”

“Still. They had, according to Abigail, a bit of a fight about it – not for the first time. He was angry about how nearly everyone else was written too, and accused her of only being generous to John Andre and then … made more accusations down that line.”

“And?”

“What ‘ _and_ ’? She confessed to having kissed him once and they broke up. But look, you can’t read this book. There is a sex scene between me and Edmund. And one between me and Abe – which no, isn’t happening and yes, I take issue with. I just don’t want to really say anything because I am the only one in our little group who has shown her any support in this thing that is worth so much to her that she would let her future fade in light of it.”

Anna figured this was because she was the only one who understood. Suddenly she felt her feet ache in Mary’s Jimmy Choos, aching to again stand behind the bar she had gambled everything to tend. Anna had Edmund who believed in her, and John who imitated his good intentions. Abigail, though witty, poignant and publically acclaimed for her part-time talents had no real encouragement within their ring. Her ex-lover had been her harshest critic.

“Wait, you _‘take issue’_ that it isn’t happening or that there are still rumours about you two that inspired someone you know and trust to write about it?”

Anna took issue with the implication. “Seriously?” she gaped. “Mom, he has been married for six years. I was married. Now I am engaged.”

“How is the sex with Edmund though?” she asked in the same hard tone.

“In the book or – you know what, no. It is private. Not something I want to talk to my mom about on the middle of the sidewalk and not something I want my dad reading about and then recommending to forty thousand podcast listeners. You have to talk to him,” Anna begged. “You have to tell him that Anne and Edward are -”

“I knew it,” her mother smirked.

“I … thought you hadn’t read it.”

“I haven’t, I knew that you had …you know,” she winked. “You are absolutely glowing today.” Sweating. Sweating was the word she was looking for. Anna wanted to vomit, die, or preferably both. Not, however, before ruining everyone responsible for making her stand signal on a sidewalk; waiting to give word that her fiancé had made it out alive and intact, hearing the worst sting of words she had ever been made to suffer by her own mother in the meanwhile.

“Yeah well, Mary Woodhull owns stock in MAC,” she muttered. “They make a bunch of things for that.”

“So, when can I expect grandbabies?”

“When we are not living in an above-garage flat in the same house as my friend who fictionalizes my sex life, my friend who happened to fuck the same boy as me while we were still undergrads and is currently married to him, the resulting child, his au pair and oh, oh, lest we forget, Judge Woodhull,” she snapped, hearing her mother’s sentiment for her situation in her own appraisal of it.

“Yeesh,” the older woman sighed behind clenched teeth. “Yeah. Two of you are always welcome at mine, you know.”

Anna allowed her imaginings to wash over her face in the form of a sneer. “No offence, but that would somehow be worse.”

“Why? A lot of millennials live at home. It is almost socially acceptable these days.”

“Wait, Mom are you … are you supporting this now? Me and Edmund?”

Nancy Smith lit herself another cigarette.

“I think it is a little fast but, it isn’t, is it? You are so … reserved, Anna. Not shy exactly, but stubborn. But not with him. And look, I really shouldn’t say anything but I rang Martha yesterday.”

“Dandridge?” Anna clarified.

“She put together a bit of a working psychological profile after her interview with Simcoe.”

“Oh that is something to go on,” she managed to spit out sarcastically before feeling her heart stop. John’s resentment was warranted and had purchase with those looking to prosecute Edmund. She glanced down the boulevard, packed with every face but the one she sought. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe it always had been. Maybe she had helped set a trap.

“Before you judge-”

“Mom, what is wrong with the NYPD?” Anna demanded. “The reason you have so little to go on is that there is nothing, nothing that could possibly tie my fiancé or his friends-”

“He is a good kid. I hesitate to even imagine the fear and stress he must be faced with but - Anna I, I can’t get into it because in truth I should not even know but, I guess I will just leave it at he seems like a lost soul, but one with a strong moral compass. He is reserved too, like you, but not with you. Wednesday night, he knowingly walked into an ambush hoping for nothing beyond the opportunity to apologise to you for the morning’s events. He looks like a wimp but that shit takes balls and for that matter, so does opening oneself to love in the first place. I think it possible that you bring out the worst in him while exposing him for his best. Martha agrees. And I’d trust her opinion of everything. We do hot yoga together,” she paused, noting Anna’s sceptical stare. “Sometimes. When that skinny bitch instructor who doesn’t wear deodorant in a room she goes to sweat does not throw us out for talking.”

“And you guys got all this from a series of interviews pertaining to criminal intent?”

“Not only.”

Her mother fell silent, failing to elaborate.

“Mom?”

“What do you want from me, Anna? I give you my blessing and support to go off and marry your literal frog prince, who, by the way, is still under investigation for the disappearance of Benedict Arnold, potentially fucking with my chances of re-election in two years -”

“In two years! Ma. No one ever throws out a standing District Attorney. Least of all for being incorrupt enough to recuse themselves from a matter due to familiar ties.”

“They do in Georgia.”

“I think our electorate looks a lot different.”

“Yeah well anyway,” he mother continued dismissively, “at the risk of great personal and professional repercussion, I’m telling you to marry the little dweeb if he makes you this happy.”

“He does,” Anna smiled. “More than anything. He does.” 

The evening before Anna had been lying naked in bed with her lover, exhausted yet euphoric as they watched the sun set over the skyline, buried by the blankets and burdens that belonged to John Graves Simcoe, momentarily absent from and immune to the disquiet of their sorrows and surroundings. _‘You are not at all what I imagined you to be,’_ Anna purred as Edmund’s perversion presented itself in a two-fingered trick.

 _‘Ah … I hate to disappoint you Love, but it so happens that I am exactly that what you envisioned. I’ve been laying here for twenty minutes or so, desperate to shower, afraid you’d … laugh, as, as you are,’_ he cooed back. Anna silenced her tittering laughter by leaning in for another kiss.

_‘You set yourself up as the primary suspect in a criminal inquiry to save your friend; take on myriad of international three letter acronyms in a bar-fight - or rather fight for a bar- that you plan to stage on Wall Street; you invite a man to all but send you to your saviour in order to elaborate an alibi; yet you are afraid on my mockery? Priorities, Eddie.’_

_‘Ah Anna, you have no idea how intimidating it is to talk to a beautiful woman.’_

Before he could compare her to nymphs that lent their names to celestial nebulae as he had before, before his charming compliments could cause the old gods to conflict, Ares manifested in the flat’s doorframe, taking the form of the owner of the sheets they had sullied. He had called for Edmund’s blood. Anna instinctively drew her bow in defence.

 _‘As I always suspected, Oyster, you hit like a girl,’_ Simcoe mocked before Anna, hearing a challenge to her sweet prince’s integrity punched again, this time throwing her opponent off-balance. Edmund cringed but came to her aide, putting himself between them as he sought to explain appropriate conduct in the construct of combat to an audience wanting and willing to tear each other to shreds. He implemented order against chaos and calamity. He kept her, John, and by then Mary who had mounted her own charge in check.

Edmund Hewlett was not built for battle but he was bright enough to organize a truces and treaties.

She was lucky to have him. They all were.

“Yeah he is … he is perfect,” Anna smiled.

“I don’t know that I would go that far. But he knows what he has and is willing to work to be worthy of you. Which will take a lot of work, mind.”

“Go easy on him,” Anna pleaded. “He has been through a lot recently.”

“Oh I know. I know and I can’t begrudge him that. Any of it.”

Her mother looked forlorn. Vulnerable. She did not know what Dr Dandridge had conditioned her to assume.

“Eddie and I are in a good place. I mean fine, not everything is ideal but I can smile knowing that I’ll have him at my side. Or in Setauket rather, living with my best friend, her son, his French tutor -”

“French tutor?”

“Aberdeen. You met her on Wednesday. Hattian, knows how to drive a stick. She is also Mary and Abe’s au pair.”

“God I am so glad I live in Brooklyn where I don’t know my neighbour’s names,” her mother commented in the tone she reserved for Setauket, never having seen the charm in small town life.

Anna smiled, “and I have a hotel room to look forward to for a few weeks. With the bestie’s ex-y.”

“Few days tops,” her mother winked. “Adams is litigating for the city.”

“Oh, thanks for your vote of confidence,” Anna blinked.

“You have my full faith and support but I have city revenue to worry about. I can’t let you kids off too easy.”

“That is the thing, Mom,” Anna objected, awed by how easily she fell into the role circumstance forced her to play. “I was looking last night and the city could ultimately generate more of a return if it gave into our client’s demands.”

“If that were true Akinbode would have sought a settlement,” the district attorney replied after taking a moment to consider it.

“He is seeking a senior partnership and wants something high-profile. Anyway, doubt he crunched the numbers with an economist and a physicist.” Anna lifted her chin in recalcitrance only to see the gesture mirrored.

“A fruitless attempt to apply y = mx + b to everything in the universe with a four percent margin of error in either direction then?” her mother returned.

Anna swallowed. She wondered if DI Tallmadge had somehow managed to bug her friend’s apartment in the twenty minutes he spent there trying to insist upon Edmund the need to file a report the day before.

Though Anna had asked Edmund to look over her mathematics late at night, he and John had been engaged in calculations widely removed from her current court case when she and Mary had come back inside from the balcony to where they had retreated when Edmund demanded a parlay with his rival.

 _‘It is all about delivery,’_ Mary had agreed as she lit a cigarette, explaining almost apologetically that she did not normally smoke either anymore when Anna told her she had quit. _‘You’ll forgive me that I don’t trust you to be in there right now. It isn’t personal. They, those two, just have a lot to sort out. I suppose you and I do as well.’_

_‘I don’t quite think so. I haven’t seen you in six years, Mary. Six years. And now we meet again in the trenches. As I see it, there is no way out but to advance forward.’_

And so they marched. Anna told her what she knew and how she had come to discover it. Mary filled in the gaps in her information until Anna caved to her sudden craving and took a fag for herself. They watched the sun expire into the city’s skyline and street below illuminate in response in relative silence, breathing the toxins in an attempt to kill the bitter tastes of the sin and error born from Edmund’s other chemical dependency that Mary had been keen to mimic. Anna was glad to know her again. Mary had not changed much with her name; she was still prone to putting on airs, to preserving through pretending that all was right until a brush with reality created enough friction to set her fictions aflame.

And oh, how brightly she burned.

They spent the better part of the next hour developing a plan. When the two returned to the room the size of twelve they found Edmund bent over printed topographical and road maps the pair had printed, in the middle of offering an impromptu mathematical lecture - unwelcoming of question, feedback or debate. John was visibly aggravated at this constant he had at least in part created. Holding a bag of no-longer-frozen veg to his injured eye, he fought for Edmund’s pen.

_‘Christfuck Hew-man Gottlieb, you can’t use the Poisson Distribution here because it doesn’t properly take into account the probability of one incident begetting another.’_

_‘I assure you it is the maths Tallmadge is using to navigate -’_

_‘It is not because he at this point has no idea that he is looking for an independent actor.’_

_‘Let’s keep it that way,’_ Anna said at the same time Hewlett asked if Simcoe was certain in his claims. 

Theirs was a difficult code to crack. Anna wondered as she watched them ignore her in favour of applying analysis to criminology if this was an argument or a heartfelt apology.

 _‘Listen,’_ Mary interrupted, creating order by making a mess of the maps she pushed onto the floor as she sat at the table beside her. Edmund rose, first to pull out the chair across from him, then kneeling to gather up the evidence of their efforts.

‘Uh, Mary, we, or rather I, am attempting to work out -’ he started, trying to control malice cutting through his voice.

 _‘Where the cops are in their investigation? We have a better idea,_ ’ Mary replied with a thin smile.

 _‘Because it is more likely that Tallmadge is employing the Hawkes Process, naturally operating under the idea of connectivity?’_ John suggested meanly, though not, Anna supposed, to Mary or herself.

 _‘How about we work with real numbers,’_ Anna offered. _‘My mother get into work at 6:50 every morning. It takes five minutes for her to turn on her computer, another two for her to sign into the system.’_

She and Mary proceeded to excitedly explain that Anna was to arrive in elegant but flash clothing, with coffee from the bodega Nancy Smith swore by and an offer of grabbing donuts from the hipster place on the corner with a line that would already be stretched around the block. She would bring her employment contract as an excuse for celebration.

_‘And this is key, I won’t be wearing the engagement ring which is no longer in my possession. That will be sure to grab her attention and excitement.’_

_‘What’s this?’_ Simcoe asked, afraid to look at her cleavage with Mary present, although, Anna noted, he had not the nerve to so much as glance at the ginger beside her.

 _‘Don’t get too excited.’_ Hewlett answered. _‘Agreement or not, I am going to wed this woman.’_

 _‘That is actually part of the plan,’_ Mary intervened. Anna would never understand why she seemed to have a personal investment in this particular partnership.

_‘I’m happy for you, Oyster. It is about time you started taking some of your own initiative, you might however avoid sounding so smug about it. It is unbecoming of your current rank and station.’_

There was something off about the way John spoke; something not in line the ways in which she had grown accustom. There was a stimulated, sprightly character to his tone, he seem disinterested in his words, in theirs, in the situation that bound them and had brought them to his table. He looked at Edmund for a reaction, for a queue on how to act. Edmund brushed him off with a flick of his wrist, sighed and spoke through clenched teeth, _‘Continue, my love.’_

_‘I think you can all attest to the fact that my mother is one of the most intrusive people you have ever met. I won’t call her back tonight - no matter how many times she rings - and I’ll appear with enough intrigue to distract her while the system is loading. If we time this right, I can make her forget she is logged in before getting her out of the office. Tallmadge and his entire team will be at will be at Whitehall. I’ve never know my mother to schedule a meeting before nine, and even if someone does walk in, Edmund, you can just say you are IT, which is a branch the city largely has to outsource anyway because they can’t afford to pay anywhere near private sector wages for full time employees.’_

_‘After Anna takes Ms. Smith from the office,’_ Mary took over, _‘you’ll have about an hour to get into all of Tallmadge’s cases and copy them to a jump drive. We will be able to see how he works and how far, or far off, he is in the Arnold disappearance. You can do that, right?’_

 _‘I helped calculate the flight path trajectory for a solar powered space probe involving a gravitational assist,’_ Edmund replied dryly.

 _‘Is that … is that relevant work experience?’_ Mary asked to the sound of John’s laughter. Anna had been wondering the same.

_‘My dear, I am but certain I can manage to copy a few files onto a jump drive.’_

_‘Good.’_

_‘You’ll need to clear the session’s history after that and lock the computer so my mother won’t expect it was used in her absence. Afterward, go to the same bodega, pick up two coffees, and um.  Say you are on your way to visit John at work. To apologise.’_

_‘No one is going to believe that,’_ Simcoe interjected.

_‘Ah … au contraire mon ami, tis you who have repeatedly proven yourself incapable of remorse.’_

Edmund looked to Mary. John looked down, despondent, deaf to the arrhythmic sound of his digits fidgeting against his chair.

 _‘Edmund, you are going to apologise,_ ’ Anna insisted. _‘At least that is what you are going to say because there is something unnerving about the idea of the two of you just hanging out.’_

The men looked at each other and nodded that this was fair criticism.

 _‘Anna is going to call out to you from wherever she is on line,’_ Mary continued. _‘She will ask for the coffee, you will stutter an excuse and then concede. While you hand her the paper cups, pass her the jump drive discreetly. Anna will then bring it to my office where I will make a copy over UNICEF’s hyper-secure server. Depending on how much material there is, I will divide it up equally. Edmund, in the meantime, you’ll go to your embassy and then to the planetarium to fill out whatever paperwork you need to with HR. Afterwards, call Anna. The two of you will meet up at City Hall to apply for a marriage licence. There, Anna will return the original, which you will bring to John. Then, together, we can come up with a plan to find Arnold and clear ourselves of suspicion and guilt.’_

 _‘Fine,’_ John said. _‘I just want this all to be over.’_

 _‘Agreed,’_ said Edmund.

 _‘Good,’_ Mary asserted. _‘Me too. Anna, if you are up to it, we can hang out in your room tonight, I’ll teach you how to walk in heels and we can find something attention grabbing for you to wear while we try to figure out the particulars of how we are all going to sell the alibis when questioned._ _We will put on a DVD or something to eliminate any threat of Richard or … my husband walking in and overhearing. Men are generally put off by femininity not designed to grab their fancy and we should have some level of privacy.’_

 _‘Gossip Girl and Prosecco?’_ Anna smiled. _‘It will be just like old times.’_

Mary’s eyes widened. _‘We have never seen the last two seasons together and if we have that playing in the background the men will surely allow us our privacy while we figure out our next few steps. Good thinking on multiple fronts.’_

 _‘What about me though?’_ Edmund inquired.

 _‘My condolences,’_ John laughed patting him on the shoulder.

 _‘Speaking of next steps,’_ Anna said, _‘I need to text Philomena. I need to text everyone. Edmund, John, you really went too far with this cover. We have to reschedule our INS-gagement party. If you want to keep playing the fake-affair, we can take pictures of you two at the same time. Once everyone’s bruises fade, of course.’_

 _‘Sorry, what is an ins -’_ Mary started.

 _‘It is a party where you get all of your mates together and take photographs to make it look as though you have been dating someone for a significant length of time to show to an immigration official,’_ John said. _‘The coppers already have Hewlett stating on record that he originally intended to marry Anna in an act of immigration fraud, so forgive me but I fail to see the point.’_

 _‘Not under oath,’_ Edmund said.

 _‘It is all a game to you isn’t it?’_ John spat. When Anna noticed he had shifted his attention to Mary, she realised he might have been asking something else entirely.

 

* * *

 

Anna glanced down the street again. Seeing nothing, she was ready to surrender, to return to camp and discover for herself what had gone so completely wrong. “Ugh, you were right, Mom. This line is taking forever. Maybe we should just go to Dunkin Donuts or something.”  

“I have been waiting for a cronut for two hours, Anna. I am no backing down now.”

Anna sighed.

“Anyway baby, I told you it would take forever.”

“I heard about a study recently that says waiting is meant to stimulate the senses, making food taste better than it otherwise would.”

“I’ll have to try that if I ever find myself in a situation that warrants cooking. But again,” her mother seemed to brag, “I live in Brooklyn where that will never be an issue.”

“You are really trying to get me to move in aren’t you?” Anna asked, hoping that for all the traits she had inherited, the inability to remain inconspicuous had skipped a generation.

“Is it such an easy sell? What are you still doing in Setauket? You two will be working in the Upper East and West Sides, respectively. Why condemn yourselves to a two hour commute with traffic?”

“I don’t know how long it will last,” she said, trying to temper her mother’s expectations. “Wachtell Lipton.”

“Jesus, Anna. You are working for one of the most prestigious law firms in the city. There is no shame in losing to Abigail Adams in your first round of litigation, none in your twentieth. That is just the way it goes sometimes. You won’t lose your job … oh my God,” she pushed Anna aside and called out, “Oh my fucking God! Edmund? Edmund! What happened to you?”

“Darling! Ah, Mrs. Smith, h- how are you this fine morning?”

Anna spun around to find herself in her fiancé’s arms, a light kiss planted on her cheek.

“And?” he asked.

“How are we? Bitter,” Anna said of her mother. “She is trying to talk me into moving to Brooklyn. With her. What ae you doing here? I thought you were going to your embassy.”

“Ah, well I admit our present predicament is far from ideal, Mrs. Smith, I will have you know I am working on -”

“Edmund, what happened to your face?” Nancy interrupted, clarifying her original question.

“Ah, well you see,” Edmund shifted, “mate and I got into a bit of a row over something rather silly and inconsequential. It is all a bit embarrassing if I am to be honest.”

“Oh,” her mother said dismissively. “No I get it. Lads fight, yea?”

“On occasion,” Edmund affirmed.

“Sure. Right. Fine,” Nancy said in quick succession before grabbing on to his shoulders, pulling him down to her level and kneeing him in such a manner as to ensure that he remained bowed. “Not lads who plan on marrying my daughter,” she said as she straightened. “Am I making myself clear, Mr. Hewlett?”

He did not reply; he writhed.

“Mother!” Anna shouted.

“Now, promise me you will never – never -do anything to cause my daughter anguish again.”

“I … of course,” Edmund squeaked.

“And you will love, cherish and protect her for all of her days?”

“Yes. God,” he begged though the worst of the pain had surely passed. Satisfied, Nancy’s roar softened to a purr.

“Is that from D’Angelo’s? Is that for me?” she asked of the paper coffee cups, half of their contents spilt on the pavement.

“It was meant for Simcoe but I can’t well go visit him now as he will think I am mocking his voice for the next half hour. Good God, woman -” he said in a high shrill.

“You can never let it go can you?” Anna said, supressing a laugh.

“You can have the coffee if you so desire,” he squeaked.

“I thought you wanted grandkids, Mom,” Anna grinned, taking the cup she was handed and the jump drive with it.

At this Edmund blinked. Then smiled. First at her, then at his future mother-in-law as he told about his revised offer from Hayden Planetarium, promising Anna that they would someday get to back the life she saw him beginning to envision. Her mother asked a few questions about his family, leading Edmund to say that while he had a certain duty – one that mostly involved posing for photographs with visiting dignitaries when he was in residence – his heart was his own. Either they would accept his decisions or they would not, but he had made up his mind. It must have pained him. He had yet to receive a response from his parents, his siblings angered on financial grounds and completely disinterested in his personal life. Edmund smiled through it for her sake.

“Setauket in Anna’s home,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I plan to make it mine permanently.”

“There is nothing in Setauket,” her mother countered.

“You needn’t stand on line for breakfast all morning,” Edmund parried.

“Where can you purchase breakfast in a town like that?”

“There is this tavern I am rather fond of,” he smiled at Anna.

Anna looked at him pleadingly. She had already spent hours lying to the only family she had left in the state, and while she was certain she could keep up much of her ruse indefinitely if need be, she could not pretend to her mother that the breakfast at DeJong’s had ever been worth having. Not today. Not with the promise of cronuts fixed in her mind.

“Take caution, Edmund,” her mother warned again, noticing the expression Anna knew herself to be wearing. “Whatever it is that you are after, take caution. I won’t see my daughter get hurt.”

“Nor will I, Madame.”

“Good,” she smiled. “Then we are in agreeance.”

“I should say that we are.”

“Anna,” she said, lighting another fag for her neurasthenia. “Do you know how to make an Aslan Sütü?”

“Excuse me?”

“When you didn’t call me back last night I went out with a DS to inquire about all things ‘Hewlett’ and after breaking down four hundred years of history and what felt like an eternity of modern politics she ordered me that. Can you make it?”

“It is just Yeni Raki with water and ice,” Anna squinted.

“Thought I would throw something hard at you. No matter. Make me one when you reopen your tavern,” she commanded.

“Mom?”

“Oh come on, you really think I didn’t know? Anna they print the bar results in the newspaper. I’ve been waiting for two years for you – rather than fucking Inspector Tallmadge – to tell me that you passed. Two years for you to tell me that practicing wasn’t your long-term goal anymore.”

“Mom, I don’t know -”

“If I seem disappointed it is only because of the knowledge that my daughter feels she has to be so secretive around me. Feels that she can be,” she smiled. Softened. As did Anna, whose eyes filled with tears. “I’m on your side, baby. I just wish you would let me be. Now, Edmund, why do you have to visit your embassy?” She missed nothing. Anna wondered if she too had spent the morning giving Edmund cover – or at least reasonable doubt. If that was why she had been smoking so much.

“I’m seeing if I can get help in applying for a special work visa,” he answered. “I organized a new arrangement with Hayden Planetarium last night, in truth I was offered a position last year but I, that is, I had a better offer with the European Space Agency at the time and, ah - regardless. It is full time with benefits, $70,000 annually with I realise doesn’t even begin to – but when, or rather if I manage to defend my thesis I could -”

“Your thesis will be nothing, Eddie. Meeting your future mother-in-law is hard enough when all you have to worry about is picking out a bottle of wine. When you are planning to commit immigration fraud, are under suspicion for the disappearance of a prominent politician and your fiancée is the only daughter of the city’s top lawyer, well I hazard to even imagine. Getting through that convinces me you can get through just about any interrogation. That said -”

“Mrs. Smith, with every respect I have no intention or marrying your daughter for a Green Card. It sickens me now that I ever imagined myself capable of such a -”

“No Edmund,” Nancy corrected, “it sickens you that anyone else could imagine you would do such a thing. But hard truth – people always will, regardless of how you obtain your legal status. That said why make it harder on yourself? You needn’t apply for extra permission, you meet all of the requirements of section 319 A of the Immigration and Nationality Act -”

Edmund looked at Anna, slightly confused. “When you ladies do the legal speak, I confess I have some difficulty keeping up.”

“You know how I feel then when you explain the solar system? With numbers?” Anna teasted.

“I, ah, I suppose that is deserved.”

“What my mother is saying is that if you still plan to marry me, which,” she said cuddling up to him, “I told her you do. As equals. You can live and work in this beautiful country of ours without applying for a special visa through your embassy.”

“To be more exact what I am saying is that if you wait until the afternoon to get yourselves over to City Hall the place is going to have turned into a Methadone Clinic and you’ll never escape the wait. Especially on a Friday. You’ll miss your appointment with HR, and mark me, if my daughter is forced to take a job she thinks herself overqualified for to make ends meet -”

“Mom, its not-”

“You will too, Edmund. Am I understood?” she insisted.

“Yes, yes Ma’am.”

“Good. So seeing as we have the embassy thing sorted out and your breakfast plans have already been cancelled, would you like to join us?”

“I uh, I shouldn’t. Anna is making me otherwise adjust my diet, you see. Smoking too. It’s been rather a Herculean set of tasks,” he said uncomfortably.

Her mother gave her a hard look as she passed Edmund a pack of Marlboros from her purse.

“Jesus fucking Christ, would you Hew –lett this man live a little? It is you yourself who told me to lighten up, that he has been through a lot lately. Surely he deserves a donut for his suffering and his efforts not to.”

And so, for the first time in her adult life, Anna Strong heeded her mother’s advice. Because the operation had hit a set back in the form of Edmund getting lost on his way to a bodega, she would be a full two hours late meeting Mary, who, at that point would not have the time to strategically divide the work as she would with her assistants and interns.

Sitting in City Hall, curled up in the arms of her lover as they waited for their number to be called, Anna looked at the bridal magazines Mary had commandeered from a colleague’s desk for her, allowing herself to dream of the day and the ones that would follow.  

She had no reason to suspect that her happiness would be so short lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s unpack the assorted cultural references, shall we?
> 
>  **Gossip Girl** is an American television series that ran from 2007 until 2012. It focused on a group of wealthy teenagers living in Manhattan’s Upper East Side whose lives were under constant disruption from a website that posted their scandalous secrets. **Serena, Blair and Chuck** were three of the main characters.
> 
>  **Ben and Jerry’s** is American ice cream. Though we import it here in Germany, I have never had it due to the outrageous price tag. Not sure how it ranks comparatively to other ice creams available in the United States, but here me out on this one – it is a frozen thing with a cow on the package. What a completely appropriate food for Hewlett to have to go searching for, or?  
>  *side note, there is no problem in the world that can’t be fixed by bingeing on GG and junk food with your girlfriends. None.
> 
>  **Anfield** , home to **FC Liverpool** is the sixth largest football stadium in the United Kingdom.
> 
>  **The Gabfest** (shortened from **Slate’s Political Gabfest** ) is a long running weekly news podcast. **Emily Bazalon** is one of its three regular hosts. When one is absent, another reporter stands in. To close the program they go off on personal tangents on whatever they find worth drinking over.
> 
>  **Zubik v. Burwell** was a case being heard by the USSC on whether religious institutions other than churches should be exempt from the contraceptive mandate two weeks after the events described thus far in H+S. I think it was thrown back to appeals a few months later.
> 
>  **The Maasai** are an ethnic group in Kenya and Tanzania, located in East Africa. One of my best friends is from Nairobi and takes personal issue with the Ghanaian name. So much so that we don’t watch Turn together anymore. (We watch Gossip Girl and complain about boys, politics, and cultural appropriation as one does.) 
> 
> **“A fruitless attempt to apply y = mx + b to everything in the universe with a four percent margin of error in either direction then?”** the problems with astrophysics and economics combined into a single joke. I deserve at least a pity laugh.
> 
>  **Hew-man Gottlieb** Herman Gottlieb is a mathematician played by Burn Gorman in the 2013 sci-fi / action film **Pacific Rim**. Burn Gorman exists in the H+S universe, which is akin to ours in every way save for the fact that horrible puns often go unchecked.
> 
>  **Poisson Distribution / Hawkes Process** means of statistical analysis adopted by criminologists. In this case, Simcoe is correct that Tallmadge is more likely to be implementing Hawkes, but here is the thing about the Poisson Distribution that is incredibly fitting to canon Hewlett – it was originally developed by the Prussian military when they wanted to account for the number of deaths-by-horse. _Go on, tell me maths aren’t fun._
> 
>  **Yeni Raki / Aslan Sütü** is the national drink of Turkey. A clear liquor turns white when it meets water, called “the lion’s milk”. Make yourself a glass before Erdogan causes further damage to the economy by shutting down the manufacturer (there is no talk of the happening as of time of publication, but who knows, this was a long chapter, maybe he has turned the republic into a caliphate by now. I am sorry for always getting so political in the notes. You all deserve better.)
> 
> So! 
> 
> Has anyone noticed how long it has been since Hewlett has had a POV? Does that sound like a preview of the next chapter? Nah. Just an open question and one I urge you to keep in mind. Next time we will check back in with Abe and Simcoe and see how they are dealing with the infidelity. 
> 
> Until then, I have this theory I want you guys to help me test if you are up to it:  
> In academia, nothing is more infuriating that getting a reply from a professor reading “Okay. Thanks.”  
> But on AO3? That would be brilliant, or so I assume. Let’s put the hypothesis to the test.  
> (Okay no, but really, thank you guys so much for reading, I really, truly hope you are continuing to enjoy.)
> 
> XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up Next: Ways to say ‘I love you’ when words are not enough


	25. The Whistle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the final scenes of the first act, two of Inspector Tallmadge’s subordinates discuss the case and their boss during their sweep of Whitehall. Meanwhile, Simcoe suffers a mental collapse and Hewlett clarifies his intentions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we find ourselves, lovely faces. There is something rather bittersweet about bringing the figurative curtain to a close. I want to thank each and every one of you who has stuck with this story this far (over a year now!) and tell you from the bottom of my heart how much your support has meant to me throughout this time. 
> 
> What I don’t want to do, however, is provide my usual list of potential trigger warnings. You’ll encounter nothing in this chapter that you have not been faced with before, either in my writing or in the source material. As much as I intend to solve a few mysteries with this update, I wish to leave you with element of surprise and suspense going in.
> 
> That said; I hope that I have managed to write you something honest and entertaining. I hope you enjoy, and I hope that you will return for Act Two now that the stage has finally been set.

It was around five o’clock in the morning when it first occurred to him that he had not bothered to change the sheets. This was not remarkable in itself. There was a maid. She would come tomorrow. Or he would cancel. Yes. He would cancel. He tried to close his eyes again, to return to vacuity uncontradicted by a perception of place.

He lied in bed with the scent of his enemy’s sweat, his sex, his sanguine fluid. He lied in bed with the sickness and sadness of solitude. He could not shut his eyes.

Out of instinct, he reached for the telephone in the vacant space beside him, finding it smothered beneath a pillow. Suffocated. Strangled. He squinted at the man reflected in its black screen. He did not recognise himself. He did not try. He typed. He typed until it no longer occurred to him that his fingers were trembling beneath the weight of what he had done.

He stopped. Set the device aside. He had nothing to say and no one to speak to. This, it occurred to him, was the first morning since the suicide that his phone would be silent. He heard instead the sounds of the street; the city dwellers for whom day was dawning, those who had not, in effect, died several months ago when someone else had chosen to swallow a bottle of crushed pills.

His eyes were wet when he tried to shut them again, wetter still when he grabbed for the other pillow – the one that had lost its case to the washing machine with all of the other bloodstained cloth the flat contained. His own face smothered, he screamed. He sobbed. He did this until he felt nothing remained inside of him aside from the consciousness of sorrow and sin and the sense of self-loathing they together bore.

He reached for the other phone, the one that would have been on the receiving end of the text if he had anything to say for himself, if he had anyone to talk to, if he had not kept the device overnight to program automated responses in conjunction with an algorithm. He read the series of generated messages and realised he could not clearly recall a single conversation he had had with his rival as of late. He looked to the device’s cloud storage; found, read and reread the five-page letter of rejection which he had thought rather amusing the morning before. It was a deception that was easier to decipher while squinting, struggling to adjust his eyes to the screen’s white glow. The letter spoke of all of that which he was sorry to recognise as the only thing that he had ever longed for. He tasted his own sick rise from his stomach as he read in words that were not present that he was loved.

Or had been.

Once.

He lied in bed with the scent of his enemy’s sweat, his sex, with the stains of his split blood. He lied in silence, numb to the street noise of morning commuters, with secrets and truths unspoken. He had nothing to say and no one to listen. He tried to close his eyes. He tried screaming again but heard no sound. The urban symphony subsided; fading in a buzz to absolute blackness, the world keen to leave him to a familiar, damning isolation marked by a psychosomatic disorder. Someday, he thought, stress would surely render him stone deaf. He questioned if anyone would be around at such time to notice. Maybe everyone already knew from the intensity of his stare – afraid to blink, to miss with his eyes what his ears neglected. Maybe they knew from his pitch or lack of depth perception. Maybe he was good at hiding his recurring deficiencies. Maybe no one cared enough to call him on it, or maybe they did and he simply had not heard.

It had all worsened as of late. He wondered how long this spell would last and if he cared to recover. He wondered what the woman he loved had said after crying for her husband. He wondered what demons existed within him that allowed him to continue the act. Continue at all.

He wished it all to end.

He rose to make himself a cup of tea, taking the expired Coffee Mate from the refrigerator. He was deaf to the sounds made by the formerly fluid substance being jostled in its container as he shook it, pouring what still flowed into a cup he found by the sink. He did not hear the electric kettle go off with its light, nor the sound of water being poured into the coffee-stained mug. He sat and watched his tea steep, mixing with the thick milk substitute, missing his father and Pakistan, missing London and the concept of family he had twice expect to find there. He missed the ideas he had long had with regard to abandonment. He missed the victim he long played at and the hero he had long thought himself to be.

He missed texting; at least, he missed the idea that he did not need his contender’s constant quips to maintain a certain calm.

He missed having someone to talk to and something to say for himself.

He missed ‘normal’, but more than anything, he missed having a basis on which to define that abstract. He sat in silence and watched the tea steep; inhaling over its scent all of the vital signs left stagnant in the air, signs of life he had quite nearly ended without a moment’s self-reproach. He opened the door to his small balcony. The day was dawning and John Graves Simcoe was dead to it.

 

* * *

 

“Have you found anything?” Braxton asked from the doorway connecting the rented room to the house proper. His tone suggested that the rest of the unit had seen their morning go to waste as well. Yilmaz found solidarity in his tired stare, if little else. They had all been taken for fools.

The plan to break the investigation’s public target by applying pressure had thus far proven unsuccessful. Hewlett’s flat looked as though it had hosted a party the night before. The mess he left seemed designed to mock her and the rest of the squad. She looked at the myriad of emptied cups and cartons with envy, spiteful of the support she saw in the unkempt room.    

“Nothing conclusive that ties Hewlett to Arnold,” Yilmaz sighed in return. “I found an old Everton jersey hidden under the mattress – planted, likely. Another damned distraction,” she spat, realizing as she spoke that a reference to Merseyside meant little or nothing to her colleague, allowing for his lack of interest in sport. This, too, annoyed her in the moment, as she was certain it would later on when she would surely be tapped to explain it – to him, Russo, Sackett, and likely Tallmadge himself. It would be no use, she reasoned, to even try until they had all had another two cups of coffee and five hours of sleep.

“But here, look at this,” Yilmaz offered, forcing herself to smile in the closest approximation to kindness she could manage on three hours’ rest. She held up a sketchpad for her subordinate’s consideration, one of twelve she had found among Hewlett’s curiosities.

“What am I looking at?” Braxton squinted.

“A sketchpad from 2014.”

“I’m still not sure what I am looking at.”

“These are all drawings of Anna Strong,” Yilmaz responded, flipping through pages upon pages of inexpertly rendered dark-haired beauties in styles borrowed and blended.

“Rather poor ones,” Braxton said blandly. Yilmaz, aggravated, clenched her jaw, exhaling slowly through her long and crooked nose. It was not that she did not share in his general assessment; it was that he failed to assess. Feeling a sudden stain of sympathy for her superior - who, in addition to all of the average stress afforded to him by his rank, was now made to manage a team of detectives too exhausted to be truly inquisitive - Yilmaz had to remind herself that days had passed since Braxton had seen his own sheets. Like her. And Russo. And Baker. Sanchez. Sackett. And Tallmadge. Detective Inspector Benjamin Tallmadge, she thought, likely never went home at night, even when there were no prominent politicians hidden somewhere in the dark.

It was beginning to show in his work. It was beginning to effect the team.

“Here is something recent,” she prompted, handing Braxton a book bound with mostly blank paper. “Hewlett is improving – look at the hands- you can tell.” He glanced quickly at the drawing. Without comparing it to an earlier rendition, he reverted his eyes back to her, unimpressed with either the progression of the search or the progression she claimed to see in the quality of her subject’s sketches. “What this says to me,” Yilmaz clarified, “is that either Hewlett is lying about the duration, nature or intent of his relationship with Strong, or-”

“Or that he went back and drew her quickly to trip us up. Wouldn’t put it past him,” Braxton interrupted. “Honestly, what would be the point about lying about an intention to commit immigration fraud?”

“One,” Yilmaz answered, crossing her arms and lifting her eyebrows, “it gives him an alibi for the time frame in question. Two - it potentially reduces Anna’s role in the Arnold disappearance. We already have more than enough evidence to show that she is unsympathetic to the senator’s politics. Three - it provides us with a certain amount of distraction, which - a case could be made - is all Hewlett intends. Look at how much time we have already wasted with him.”

“A distraction from who or what exactly? Anna? You can’t think -”

“Simcoe,” she clarified, “according to Tallmadge at least.” Yilmaz took a step closer to her subordinate and sometimes-lover. The sergeant spoke in a hiss as she pointed between her eyes - widened with warning and yesterday’s winged liner, and his - suddenly alert with interest. She realised instantly from his expression that she had been correct in her assumptions - Tallmadge still held most of his squad at length.

Yilmaz grew furious.

“We aren’t having this conversation, look at me, you understand that right? We aren’t having this conversation, but Ben is of the mind that if we put Hewlett under enough pressure, one of them – either he or Simcoe - will break. After scouring over your intel from yesterday, I would tend to agree with him, but the sweep …”

Braxton nodded slowly.

Her voice low and level, her gestures and expressions the equivalent of the sorts of profanities screamed at animals trained for blood-and-betting sport, Yilmaz continued, “I don’t know what he is after keeping the whole unit in the dark. He can’t possibly expect any of us to do our jobs effectively if he doesn’t trust us-”

“Maybe he doesn’t trust himself,” Braxton suggested. “Personally, I would like to see this Hewlett go down, for anything we can pin him with, really. I just got off the phone with Agent Church form the FBI’s London outpost. That is actually what I came up here to tell you.”

Yilmaz perked. There was a part of everyone assigned to Special Crimes who wanted to see the Scotsman hang for interfering with a criminal investigation – something that, as things stood, would be difficult to bring to trial. Unless the FBI could do what her squad’s English equivalent was prevented from, however, Edmund Hewlett and the whole of his family would suffer little if any consequence for assisting in a cover-up.

“Oh, way to go,” she smiled, crossing her arms again as she awaited an explanation form the division’s resident bureaucrat. What Braxton lacked in inquiry he made up for in organization. Yesterday, she had briefly considered delegating the red tape she had been shown by Scotland Yard and Interpol down to him before thinking better on it. His talents would be wasted on such an assignment. There was, as Yilmaz - and no doubt the Met - saw it, nothing licit regarding Ferguson’s appointment to any investigation involving the Hewletts. He himself seemed to recognize this. In both incidences - now, and in the 2008 case in which both Hewlett and Simcoe had been suspects - Ferguson had rightly attempted to recuse himself; both requests had been denied. This, Yilmaz knew from experience, was so the British courts could discredit any evidence found in the course of his investigation, a reality of which she was certain Ferguson must be aware. This, and the simple fact that the inspector had every conceivable reason to want to watch the figurative house burn, would be the key to breaking him; to gaining access to the old case files. There was no above board way to go about it.

Such fell into DS Yilmaz’s skillset.

DC Braxton, by stark contrast, processed the stamina and perseverance she imagined it required to wait on hold, to otherwise navigate the Bureau’s ridiculous touchpad hotline. He seemed the only person in the entire world of policing able to make A and B connect through a straight line, the only one who knew how the mythical form to make that happen was labelled and where it was located. He had her upmost respect in that measure. “How long did it take to get through?” she asked.

Braxton cleared his throat before giving her a grin she might have thought cheeky had she not known him as well as she did. “Church called me because I emailed her for follow-up to yesterday’s arrest. Eugene Hewlett has been in custody for nineteen hours now. The press has already taken note and published an explanation of sorts. It came way too soon. There is a leak somewhere.”

“BuzzFeed? I’ve seen it.”

“What she and I both found curious,” he continued, “was that when the snippet went online he had only been gone for two hours or so; too early for anyone to otherwise question his whereabouts or try to cover them. The explanation for his disappearance is so in keeping with his public persona it seems to have been written beforehand; the release was just too perfectly timed. Clearly, it is a cover, but a terribly risky one from a public relations perspective unless the organization somehow expected him to be absent at length. Maybe he wrote it himself, directly after disconnecting with Simcoe. That’d be something, huh? Kinda feel bad for the guy.”

Yilmaz was not entirely convinced of wider conspiracy. It was too common of a move for the family to make.

Five hours of research the afternoon before had shown Constable Sanchez and herself that the French edition of the online media portal adored scandals involving Paris’s princely socialite. It was true that exaggerated stories of his antics usually found their way onto the site coinciding with events that would prove more difficult for the family and their business to navigate if not for the pulchritudinous focal point on offer. It was tragic, in a way. From what she could tell, there was little basis in truth to any of the rumours the press promoted. Eugene Hewlett had undergone a gastric bypass as a minor, the result of which, the coroner confirmed for her, would make it difficult for him to consume half the substances to which he was accredited. There were no wild parties, none, at any rate, that he could take an active role in or what have want or energy to incite.

There was something sad to it from every angle. Shy, sulky Edmund had been forced into the position previously; existing solely to be envied until illness rendered that particular narrative unprintable. Resulting from the stroke, his little brother had been forced to lose the equivalent of ninety pounds in the span of seven months to serve as an eventual stand-in, a mere decoration at the social events he was made to attend in a demonstration of his surname’s predominance. Yilmaz wondered what Eugene was like when not being forced to bear the burden of his brother’s absence from public life; she wondered if even he knew anymore. She wondered if Hamilton was right to assume a link between his latest brush with the press and the rising prices of Setauket properties.

She closed her eyes.

She considered.

She remained unpersuaded, reasoning that if the article was planned, it had likely to do with the Copenhagen shipping contract that fell though in favour of the extending one with the city of Liverpool. The Hewletts showed a clear preference for a public crisis to a fiscal one and this negotiation could prove detrimental to stock price and shareholder interest should it receive much attention in the days after it had been brokered.

Based on past human interest pieces coinciding with what might otherwise corporate upset, Sergeant Yilmaz believed this was nothing more than the regular course of business. If history was being called upon to serve as any indicator, the Hewletts, their attorneys and their advisors, had perfected the art of playing the press, or rather, getting the press to play along. Payoffs were probably involved somewhere.

Still, she considered, there was a certain specific that rightly raised alarm. Why state that the prince was taking an extended retreat from his immediate family, from public life? There was no way of knowing how long he would be detained, and, insofar as Yilmaz knew, no way of anticipating the arrest. She handed it to Braxton and Church; there was something amiss. But a leak from within? There had not been time for that either.

“Could his counsel have been the tipoff?” she suggested.

“No,” Braxton said. “Eugene Hewlett isn’t entitled to any here. No one outside of our squad and our foreign and federal colleagues has any way of knowing about the arrest. He did not get a phone call. When he was sixteen, you see, Eugene went on a Green Peace expedition with his mother. ‘Save the Whales’, you know?”

“And because they are officially classified as a terrorist organization…”

“The Feds can keep him for as long as they deem necessary without giving him access to a solicitor. A lucky stroke. Or, I suppose for Copen-Hewlett, an extremely unfortunate one. He was questioned about the content in the blurb by the way. Apparently, it checks out. Almost. He’s known from the onset that he was not the biological father of his wife’s unborn child and went as far as to take formal measures to adopt it. All and all he has been surprisingly forthcoming. Of interest to us, or, of interest to Hamilton – two nights ago he transferred his child’s trust fund into Simcoe’s management. He also purchased -or tried to, all of his transactions have since been delayed - DeJong Tavern for an Anna Hewlett. Who doesn’t exist.”

“Yet.”

“An apartment that appears to be in the same building as Simcoe’s –apropos, the one Hamilton really thinks is the key to a larger money laundering scheme- seems to have been purchased for the same lady. I would otherwise think he is telling the truth, but where did the money come from? We are talking several million he can’t seem to explain, though he proved open and candid when other transactional questions were posed to him.”

“You think he will be tortured? By the Feds I mean.” Yilmaz asked after a moment, still stuck on and sickened by the fact that a man was being held without the possibility of legal recourse. It felt so foreign and yet so familiar. Her mother had lost her tongue as a young woman to the Jandarma İstihbarat Teşkilatı when a jealous neighbour claimed to have heard her speaking Kurdish. Whether or not she had not was of no regard. There had been no process, no appeal and, in effect, no justice for either her mother or for the state she had then been forced to flee, made mute and marked as a political dissident. Her story had given a younger Hatice strong belief in America and in the land’s legal process. She began her career believing the US better, believing that American justice was always just. Every day with Special Crimes, every day her department was forced to work with agencies outside the NYPD, served to test her faith.

“Far be it for me to criticize how intelligence operates overseas, but the only reason to charge a minor who just happened to have been drug out onto a boat with intent is if you mean to do them in when it becomes politically convenient,” Braxton shook his head. “Guilty of money laundering or not, I don’t think the Hewlett the feds have will ever see the light of day again. If our Hewlett is not guilty in some way, what is his baby brother dying to protect? The only reason they are even looking into this is the confession you guys got on surveillance. Eddie Hew knew what he was doing, he knew the consequences - you can tell. Honestly, I hope he goes down. For whatever. Sorry to say it but I really do. How could anyone possibly have so little regard?”

There was something tragic to looking at law enforcement this way; in thoughtlessly commenting that they hoped a man would hang for a crime he could not have committed because it might serve to validate a needless death. There was something tragic in that this sentiment was shared to some extent among all members of the squad.

Yilmaz shook her head. I’m better than that, she told herself. I have to be for America is better than that. She repeated this in her mind several times before speaking, the morning’s new mantra. She must refuse to betray the law she had sworn to uphold and inforce for the sake of convenience or personal conscience. She hoped that their colleagues at the FBI would see things the same way.

Ben Tallmadge, it seemed, could not – caught on an endless crusade like the preacher’s son he was.

“The only reason we are looking into his confession is because he handed us a distraction,” Yilmaz corrected. “I don’t think there is a large scale money laundering operation going on, and if there is I truly don’t think Edmund Hewlett knows anything about it. I really, really don’t think that his past financial problems have anything to do with Arnold. And I don’t think Tallmadge is thinking at all,” she paused, letting a steam of hot air escape from her nostrils in a huff. “To be completely honest, I imagine the only part of that evidence you gathered from Dr Dandridge’s office that our esteemed boss is paying any attention to is the invoice from Pfizer. I am fairly certain that if he took notice of anything else we wouldn’t be here at Whitehall right now.”

“Oh I know,” Braxton agreed, “he is pissed.”

Yilmaz nodded. It was not that she did not empathise. It was not that she did not understand the base of Ben’s obsession.

Nate Hale had been a hero; now he was nothing more than a photo on a desk.

If it had been her instead, Yilmaz reasoned, if she and Russo had been working a complex case that had seen her partner killed; if she had gotten an unexpected break in it only to be thrown off hours later, she too would likely tried everything to get herself reattached.

Everything, she thought, save for ignoring the investigation to which she was currently assigned.

No arrest was going to bring Ben Tallmadge’s sole friend back. Nothing would. Her boss, however, could never be convinced of this. As Yilmaz saw it, this left her, Russo, Braxton, Baker, Sackett and Sanchez to find Benedict Arnold on their own.

They were wasting as much time at Whitehall as they were with assisting the FBI, who, she noted, had thus far done nothing to assist them aside from providing refreshments when the partnership had been announced.

Yilmaz cleared her throat loud enough to startle Braxton.

“Andre was really on to something with his research. Now for the impossible task of proving that to Tallmadge,” she sighed. “You’re right, you know. You’re kind enough not to say it, but you’re right. I need something more conclusive than these fucking dated drawings. They do indicate to us that Hewlett has lied to us, though. Probably about a number of things. I think we need to get Anna into interrogation if we really want to put him under pressure. Sweeping here clearly isn’t doing the trick.” Yilmaz shut her eyes again and uttered a number of curses she did not bother to translate, eventually continuing, “I swear he is trying to ruin me. Ben. I’ll never be promoted if I bring the daughter of the fucking DA in for questioning. I’ll never be promoted because our little cunt of a boss is forcing me to lead the charge with this case.”

“That is what you want though, isn’t it? Authority?”

“What I want,” Yilmaz insisted, “is to find Arnold.”

“Are you sure there is something to this?” Braxton asked quietly, if only to chastise her for how loud she had grown. He flipped sceptically through a third sketchbook pulled from the wardrobe. “Odd place to keep them.”

“It shows he obviously loves her and has for some time. That is what this whole thing is about, you know. The suspects, the study you uncovered. Its love.”  

“Fear,” Braxton corrected with reference to the title of Andre’s research thesis.

“No. Think about it for a second, Andre has been conducting an extended closed study on a group of men by systematically exploiting the effects of personal stress on field performance. Simcoe has accrued more cards since Hewlett’s announcement that he planned to return to Europe, something remarkable when you considered that the team played in less than half their scheduled matches in the last half-season.”

“English?”

“More fouls.”

“Okay.”

She was not sure he understood.

“He – Simcoe - is acting out on his fear of abandonment, specifically one he has grown accustom to. One that has served to define him. Meanwhile Andre seems to have done everything in his influence to make the situation permanent and irreversible while trying to tap the desired reaction.”

“Why would _blatant violence_ -” Braxton started, angered by the implication.

“I looked it up. Martha Dandridge has a long history with General George Washington. The Pentagon, which also underwrote this research as you noted, is currently working on a deal with certain pharmaceutical companies to improve mental health under TriCare. As what we have seen of Andre’s study suggests, here, by improve they mean … exploit. I am willing to venture that this is why everything in Hewlett’s file is either missing or classified. But alas,” she sighed. “No convincing Tallmadge. No point now. We wasted our one search warrant on Whitehall. Now that the case has been delegated to ADA Burr, I mean. Shit, you know?”

Braxton sighed.

“Yeah. I do. I do. But regarding Whitehall proper …” he trailed off.

“Kevin?” Yilmaz asked.

He scratched at what remained of his hair. “What bothers me as a sort of inverse of the evidence you found suggesting that Hewlett has been in, or has been harbouring ideas towards, a relationship with Ms. Strong far longer that he admitted to in interview is that I found nothing - absolutely nothing- linking Mrs. Woodhull to Mr. Simcoe. She seems a sentimental sort. I figured there would be a card, a receipt, new underwear, something.”

“I’ve yet to speak with either of them but according to the transcripts they have been taking efforts to be very discreet.”

“But then why tell us repeatedly that they are having an affair? I know what discretion looks like from personal experience,” he stopped. Their eyes had a conversation about things she knew he did not –and would never - understand about her parent’s culture. At least, she reasoned, he respected it most of the time. “Uh,” Braxton stammered, “in this case, both parties appeared … um, proud is not quite the word I would use when describing their affair but I am failing to find an alternative.”

“Satisfied?” Yilmaz offered.

“Something akin.”

“A legitimate emotional reaction to confession,” she began to argue. “Especially if we take into account that they have taken pains to leave no evidence – oh. Kev, no. I know where you were going with this - it calling their alibi into question - but CSI found no evidence at DeJong Tavern, either. We have nothing.”

“Can’t go to Ben with that.”

“No. I need something more than logic and absence to grab his attention away from the Pfizer invoice. He hasn’t actually, actively listened to my input in longer than recollection allows. I doubt he will bring either Simcoe or Woodhull in for a follow up until he has driven the former half-mad no matter what angle we approach this from,” Yilmaz ranted. She had no way of knowing that their boss’s tactic had already succeeded. Still, it would be Sunday afternoon before they had grounds on which to subpoena Simcoe - by which time one of their number would be lain in a hospital bed from which he would never rise as a result.

“We could make him think he thought of it on his own,” Braxton suggested. _‘We’_ , Yilmaz assumed, meant _‘you with your fancy bachelor’s in philosophy.’_ She declined.

“Leave that for the John Andre’s of the world. I have an actual job to do. One that involves finishing here and then going to Columbia and talking to every professor who ever knew Edmund Hewlett. Maybe I will find an excuse to check in with Social Sciences whilst there.”

“Do that and you’ll get stuck to the torrid non-affair between Mary Woodhull and John Graves Simcoe,” Braxton jested over his own misfortune.

“An improvement to flipping through two years of sketchbooks wondering how hard it can possibly be to draw a human hand,” Yilmaz laughed.

“The real mystery.”

 

* * *

 

It was different from silence. Silence was definable. Deafness, by contrast, was deceit. It was marked less by the absence of sound than it was by the various stimuli that served to substitute. Whereas the reset of his department had a team meeting that morning, he spoke only with his boss, afraid of missing something crucial if he averted his eyes to the others, all of whom, he felt certain, could not peel their eyes from him. He knew he interrupted on occasion. He knew his colleagues thought him completely inept. He knew himself, however, to be capable, regardless of the sort of criticism so often directed at his character. He made a constant point of conducting himself so - civil insofar as to inspire apprehension. As such, on this morning, the morning his phone had not and would not ring, the morning when he could not hear it if it had, no one perceived anything amiss. Though it seemed a particularly extended episode, it was not the first time he had lost his sense to stress.

This, he realised, should not have come as the comfort it did.

When the meeting was over, he returned to his office without a word, reading the messages sent between his phone and the one that he reasoned ought to have been claimed by this point. He read and he wrote to avoid what he refused to recognize as worry. He worked. Sometimes he found himself staring without seeing, looking to white walls absent of numbers that signalled the passage of time. He stared until his passive thoughts became active, until he could almost hear the sound of his fingertips –simultaneously prancing and pounding against whichever surface they touched. It was not enough to mute the sound of Mary’s screams, pained, frightened pleas that had been playing in his mind since he dared to touch her.

It had not been mutual. Escaping murder, ignoring marriage, had made him into a monster.

None of his mates, it seemed, would mourn the man he had been.

He stared until he saw in the framed poster that hung opposite his desk the back of one of his closest friends as he left the diner last night after calling his sin for what it was. He stared until he remembered the pictures of Abe and Thomas, Mary following him home that she not be forced to face them with tear stained eyes. He stared until _‘Keep Calm and Carry On’_ simply read ‘ _Confess’._ And then he looked away. It was taking too long. He looked back at his phone and back at the one beside it. The one he reasoned ought to have been claimed by this point. He read.  He wrote. He did this until he could almost hear Hewlett’s brisk, irritating little voice.

“What the devil is wrong with you?” the Scot seemed to demand via a text over who would be sitting on Stoke’s substitution bench tomorrow.

He tried to think of a root answer to a question he knew had not been phrased.

“Simcoe!”

He looked up and saw his beloved enemy before him, breathless and beaten. Edmund Hewlett looked decidedly defeated. He had done this. He had done this and thus proved Martha Dandridge wrong. Just as he was ready to call the match for himself, he was forced to consent defeat. Hewlett, he realised, was readying for a fight. He wondered how long, and how loudly, his name had been called. Rather than expose a recurring deficit by inquiring how long he had been standing there – ever indignant, in his upright, pretentious manner, hands folded before him in high political fashion - Simcoe simply accused him of being late. Which he was. It was after four.

“I’m getting married,” Hewlett replied, handing him a folder from City Hall as though it were an excuse or explanation. Simcoe flipped through the first few pages without interest. “So you are,” he said. It was a meaningless statement, as were the congratulations that followed. Hewlett spoke. Simcoe wanted a cigarette. He wanted to return to the quiet that had given him quarter for the past eleven hours. He wanted Hewlett to sit and this he said aloud.

“What is that?” he asked, eyeing the package placed on his desk with suspicion.

“Lunch,” Hewlett clarified curtly. It was after four. Simcoe handed him his phone, lock screen lit lest this fact be disputed.

“To be more exact?” he inquired lightly.

“Mary Woodhull made you a quiche this morning.”

“Mrs. Woodhull … made that … for me?” He was as loath to speak her given name as he was to hear it, to know it. He examined the pasty while he unwrapped it from its baby-pink baking paper. It looked like an apology, or rather, like an accusation she could not bring herself to make. Hewlett stammered; Simcoe retreated to a sullen silence liken to that which he had created following Mrs Woodhull’s utterance of Mr Woodhull’s sobriquet the night before.

“She got up at about five, saw that Abe had purchased another two dozen eggs and decided to do something with them out of spite.”

“Care to elaborate?” his voice grew higher with each elongated syllable. Almost piercing. Hewlett’s shifting visage made it clear that Simcoe made himself the object of his own attempted mockery through the way in which he spoke.

He said nothing to that regard. He needn’t.

On its own merits, his dear teammate had by every measure a rather ugly face - absurd, asymmetrical, sickly pale with scars left by an adolescent battle with acne. Still, Simcoe had cause to begrudge him his strangely good fortune for he envied the wounds Hewlett could cause with the slightest sneer. Simcoe stared at him blankly, feeling his own expressional arsenal too comparatively depleted to return fire. How often, he wondered, had he surrendered his entire garrison to a gargoyle’s grimace?

Hewlett then grinned, satisfied. Simcoe felt again off guard.

“From what I understand,” Hewlett continued, “it is a sort of pie in the American understanding: crust only on the bottom, filled with eggs, onions, bacon -”

“About the eggs,” he interrupted, insulted. He knew what a quiche was. He failed to reason, however, how Mrs. Woodhull harboured such a hatred for a basic source of protein that she had spent the morning baking. For him. But maybe that was the point. He looked at the dish. No one had ever put this much effort into saying ‘ _no_ ’ or ‘ _no more_.’ He loved her for it.

“The eggs? I am fairly certain ‘hardboiled’ is the only dish our mutual acquaintance in question is familiar with making,” Hewlett answered, “that is to say, in a rather loose sense.”

“He not top them with Beluga Caviar then?”

“You mock now, but, the young Mr. Woodhull typically cooks up a carton or so on whatever day he decides to start his week, refrigerates them and then seeks to reheat them with his morning or mid-afternoon coffee.”

“That is suspicious,” Simcoe commented.

“Of what?” Hewlett sputtered, again with a taxing scowl, though, this time, not directed at him. “Repulsive is more the term I would settle on.”

“That he buys so many of them.”

“That is ah … a recent development,” Hewlett continued, arid yet aloof, “Mrs. Woodhull thinks there might be another lady in the picture.”

“Because of … eggs?” Simcoe straighten his shoulders to the back of his chair. He took a deep inhale, again wishing it to taste of tobacco. If he were to be given actual evidence that Abraham Woodhull could, in fact, convince a woman – any woman - to have sex with him; if he were lead to discover that the attraction had anything to do with hardboiled eggs; Simcoe vowed he would surrender to the mad injustice of it all and confine himself to a monastery for the rest of his days.

“Ah … precisely my thoughts on the matter,” Hewlett commented on the disgust Simcoe guessed himself to be projecting.

“So … the problems between the Woodhulls then are breakfast-based?” he asked, hoping he had managed to modulate derision as opposed to desperation.

“Their marriage only became a matter of my personal attention or concern upon discovering Mary was your accomplice in the entire messy business of Tuesday night,” Hewlett replied, curt, crisp and quick, “but I imagine their problems must run a bit deeper than that if she is entertaining the possibility of your offer aloud.”

“My offer?” Simcoe had very nearly forgotten the promises he had made the previous afternoon as poorly as the early evening had gone. He had wanted to help her. Instead, he’d had her. He had never felt worse. “What did she say?”

“Nothing. To me, nothing. To Abigail,” Hewlett sneered as he said the name, “that she envied her confidence in walking away from a relationship that was no longer serving to fulfil her.” His eyes shifted to the side.

The two then shared a moment’s silence, signalling solidarity with the friend with whom they now, otherwise, found themselves estranged. After due respect for Akinbode’s plight had been paid, Simcoe continued to inquire with caution, “And she … Mrs. Woodhull … still wants me to help her do that? To walk away?”

“She wants you,” Hewlett said after what felt a long while.

“She doesn’t,”   Simcoe stated. That much seemed fact.

“With respect, no one is happier with the sorts of problems losing a corpse creates than they otherwise would be - unless, that is, they were keen on their partner in crime,” his rival returned, rubbing his temples as he spoke.

“She called out Abe’s name while I was fucking her.”

At this Hewlett looked up. Blinked. As suddenly as care surfaced in his eyes, it turned back into chastisement. “And?” he baited, “Anna laughed at me. Actually laughed. Most mortifying experience of my life and as you well know, there have been many contenders.”

“Well … that was to be expected,” Simcoe felt himself smile at their definitive refrain of self-deprecation and schadenfreude.

“Fair,” Hewlett conceded with a shrug. His thin, pressed lips hesitated upward. Simcoe shook his head.

“It is different with Mrs. Woodhull. It is … not what you think.”

“Ah … she made you a quiche, Mate,” Hewlett said as through he expected it to prove a convincing argument.

“With her husband’s eggs,” Simcoe spat, “As she let me fuck her in her husband’s bloody name.”

 

* * *

 

It happened as he had her on her desk, clothing still on, her heels digging into his back, nickers and nylons at her ankles, pencil skirt hitched up to her waist. With her legs squeezed around him, she was tight enough that he could forget she had had a child, that she was married, that this was wrong.

She moaned.

She was faking it.

She thought him a fool.

The wall behind her desk suddenly felt like a hundred pictures of her husband when she then called out his name like a plea or a prayer.

_‘Oh, Abraham! Abe! Oh God!’_

Simcoe heard in it an insult. He studied Mary – petit and rather plain - not the sort of woman he would ordinarily feel any sort of attraction to. But this was not attraction anymore. This was anger. He covered her mouth and gazed deeply into her dampening eyes as he devastated. Harder. Harder. Harder still, until he was certain that she would struggle to breathe even without deprivation. Until she became convinced that she was not gently making love to a man out of obligation. Until she knew beyond a shadow of doubt that she was a sinner, too. She screamed with pleasure. She screamed his name. She screamed. She screamed. Until he heard nothing.

He remembered who he was, where he was, and what he was not to do. He finished anyway. Afterwards, she cried. He had not heard a thing.

 

* * *

 

“Were you not the one to tell me that as long as you could keep them thinking about the act itself you were doing alright?” Hewlett belittled him. It was banter. It was what they did. There were not words for what had happened between himself and Mrs. Woodhull, and if there were, Hewlett would not try to normalize it in this way. He would condemn him, and he would be in the right.

Simcoe wondered what Mary had said, if she had censored her confessions to keep Hewlett on side. He wondered what caused Hewlett to stay. He wanted to ask, though he did not want to know.

“That is more for casual sex,” he smiled. “For people you don’t care to call the next day. For shits like you.”

“You would call me the next day,” Hewlett winked.

Simcoe considered realistically, reflecting upon experience, that would have texted Oyster instead. Constantly. That he would have gone mental until such time that he received a response. And then he would repeat the process. It occurred to him painfully that their ongoing debate had not just been for the sake of his suicidal sometimes-friend. The realization that Hewlett had come to that conclusion some time ago was at once corroding and comforting. No. It was neither. It was simply what they did. It was ‘normal’; if he was forced to define an abstract with another, it was ‘enough’.

But it was different with Mary.

Mary wanted more, but she did not want it solely from him.

He did not want to talk about it.

“Yea … but only because I’ve no one else in this whole bloody continent with whom to watch The Championship,” Simcoe replied, dry, desperate to change the topic before he slipped into depression over things too late to take back.

“Do you have any one in Britain keen on second-tier footy?”

“No, but there I could just walk into a pub.”

“Speaking of,” Hewlett said, pulling the jump drive from his jean’s pocket. “Let’s see if Tallmadge found anything of note at DeJong’s.”  

Simcoe nodded. The only positive he could find in Hewlett and Anna concluding that the blood that stained his hands belonged to Benedict Arnold was that he might never again find himself alone with Mary Woodhull. Something returned to him from the rejection that had provided some measure sanctuary from his haunting recollections. _We could have been happy had I been in a better place._

He pulled out his laptop with the memories of the nights prior, wondering if a version of that sentiment could have ever held true for him and his original accomplice, if they could have been happy had they found the senator in the basement where they had left him. If they had no reason to ever contact one another again.

He wondered if, now that he knew her, he would or could find happiness in anyone else.

He looked at the quiche.

Simcoe felt worse than he had sweating in his suit, requesting that she strangle him with his necktie in an attempt at asphyxiation rooted in Draconian Law. Worse than he felt when she realised he was enjoying it. Worse than he felt when her lips pressed against his, lips that still echoed, still tasted of another man’s name.

For Mary he had been an escape. However short. He longed to again be the place she ran to. He loathed that, for her, he would gladly fill that void if it were emptiness she offered. He loathed that he would prefer to be nothing to her as long as he was with her, even if she was not with him.

He had to end this.

He stared at Hewlett and the word ‘obsession’ the profiler had used returned to him until it was all he heard. He had no argument to serve as a defence. He had not ceased thinking of Mary since she had blinded him in the headlights of an antiquated sedan. He wondered if he had ever so much as truly crossed her conscious mind.

He had to end this.

Hewlett, he noticed, was speaking - doubtlessly about himself or on some interest only an un- or under-employed thirty-something who had first lost his virginity within the past day could possibly have found time to invest in. Simcoe swindled in his chair, moving to better read what he struggled to hear. He watched, hoping hatred and envy to return him from the mental paralysis of paranoia.

Hewlett glanced at him, as though he fully suspected that he was being ignored, something he seemed to feel ease in accepting. Simcoe wondered sometimes if he knew. Sometimes he would say things like ‘ _When you talk … you make it such a challenge to listen_ ,’ or ‘ _I fade in and out_.’ Sometimes Hewlett would say things like ‘ _You never hear me when I speak,_ ’ which was an exaggeration, but then Hewlett had always been prone to melodramatic language. He wondered if he knew, he wondered if he could recognize it now if he did. Sometimes, Simcoe considered, he did not even realise it himself until it had passed.

He watched his adversary’s lips part around the pretentious words which Simcoe imagined Hewlett pretending to himself properly distracted from the peculiar shaped mouth that spoke them. He realised in some short time that his unlikely ally was still on about the past glories of Liverpool FC, a topic which Simcoe found about as dry and dated as the Peloponnesian Wars – which had been his initial assumption.

 “I would go so far as to say that I hope you make it to the final so I can see you crestfallen when you enviably fail to take a title,” Simcoe interrupted merrily as he uploaded the files from the jump drive. “It has been too long since I’ve heard the mournful cry of the liver bird.”

Hewlett sighed. “No accounting for taste I suppose.”

“I’ve half a mind to make you wear that old jersey to the grand reopening.”

“Though I have no doubts with regards to your designs on my torture, I don’t imagine that we shall ever get it back from evidence. Mary hid it under my mattress saying that the cops would be certain to grab it in their sweep.”

“Why would they?” Simcoe asked.

“I have a day blanket with the rival team’s logo on my bed and a shield hung above my desk. It will look suspicious existing amongst my possessions at all and provided they bring it to forensics cartridge discharge residue will be found on the garment, confusing the cops and buying us time if nothing else.”

“I think the cops are a tad too confused about sport for that to make much of an impact, but Mrs. Woodhull’s clever thinking impresses me,” he paused. She did not want him. She could not and there was no point discussing it. “The blanket the reason you decided to fuck at mine?” he shifted meanly. “Too much of a turn off?”

Hewlett gave him a slight smile. Again, with a look, he won the round. Simcoe retaliated with a glare, questioning whether it would be better to purchase an industrial sized vat of bleach with which to scour every surface of his home, or to simply burn it upon return and give the whole affair a fitting finale. The maid would not come tomorrow. He would spend another week sleeping in soiled sheets.

“Did they not ask you a great deal about the beautiful game when you went in to clear up a few fine points about that time I stabbed you only to find myself in hospital with hypothermia?” Hewlett asked as they waited for the files to finish their transfer. It was an effort to concede some ground. It was an apology, if he were looking for one.  

“Aye … Good times,” Simcoe replied, realising he counted episodes of senseless bloodshed among his fondest memories. This gave him pause. “Do you think it the mutual animosity aspect?” he asked without offering any additional clarification. He wondered if hatred was the only shared sentiment he would ever experience, and then, only sometimes. Only when Hewlett had something to gain.

Simcoe wondered if he was ‘projecting’ in part. He wondered if there was even such a thing as projection or if it was only a three-syllable word that therapists used to fill a fraction of their hour.  

He opened the folder marked ‘Dandridge’, curious to see what she had to say on the matter.

There were more PDF documents present in the file than he anticipated.

And they were all in John Andre’s handwriting.

 

* * *

 

“Let’s call Rogers; if anyone knows Andre’s whereabouts it would be him. I imagine there is a rather … rather logical explanation for all this -” Hewlett stammered quietly, almost to himself after half an hour had passed.

“I think this is the logical explanation for everything!” Simcoe shouted. The room shook.

Hewlett took a step back. He winced. He spoke.

“Ah … Yes I … it would seem-”

“We’re not calling Rogers,” Simcoe reiterated. “We’re not going to look for Andre. Because mark me, Edmund, if I ever see his face again I am going to kill him. I’ll fucking kill him,” he put more weight into each word he spoke.

Hewlett did not respond. Simcoe then felt as though he spent the next half hour crying and and screaming and carrying on in the way a child might. Instead, he just sat starring at the monitor, at Hewlett, at the wounds he had inflicted the day before, darkened by the night that had found its way in and demanded quarter. He wondered if his sometimes-friend was in more pain than he was letting on.

He remembered the way things had been before the past summer, before Hewlett first announced his intention to return to Scotland. He had been ‘normal’ then. They both had. Until Andre had found a way to rob them of that. Them along with the rest of the team. Simcoe had evidently given information he had not known himself to possess. That he currently did not know how to process.

He sat.

He skimmed.

He studied.

Hewlett placed his hand atop his own to settle the fingers beating out a death march on the arm of the chair which he had made into his drum. Hewlett had nearly died and the fact that he had not gave him hold Simcoe feared might never loosen. Because Hewlett was selfish. Because Hewlett was scared. Because Hewlett assumed the same was true of him.

Simcoe thought back to when they were children, to the two weeks he spent in the back of a van wondering if he would ever know freedom again or if he was meant to die there, a little more than a year after it would have been appropriate. He thought of his father promising him they would stop and get ice cream for his birthday later that afternoon. He remembered staring out the window in the back seat of the Jeep, bored out of his mind, unable to appreciate that it was the last time he would be able to relax in any kind of vehicle.

He had not spoken much that morning.

He could not after.

He remember his mother’s flat in London, knowing she was screaming at him, not knowing what she was saying or if he was meant to respond. He remembered trying. He did not remember if he cried or not. He knew he had not when Hewlett tried to die in the same fashion. He remembered screaming, talking, reading aloud, filling a damning silence with anything but the machines that beeped with life but sounded like death.

He heard a familiar buzz. One that came and went but now, it seemed, would never leave. He looked up at Hewlett. He could not hear him speak yet, he heard him for the first time. Simcoe missed the way things used to be between them. He missed who Hewlett had once been. Simcoe missed Pakistan and his father, he missed London and the idea of family he had twice lost there, he missed his friends back home and the idea that he had any here.

Everyone was afraid of him now.

As they well should be.

He had come close to murdering a stranger he had disagreed with over drinks. He imagined Arnold’s pummel face as Andre’s, as the man who had wanted Hewlett to give into his demons to watch how Simcoe danced with his own. To see how what he chose to call ‘fear’ worked on the human psyche. To see his name on a study.

Simcoe would show him what ‘fear’ truly was, or so he vowed again before throwing up. He felt Hewlett holding back his hair as he handed him a waste bin.

“I’ll kill him,” he repeated, tasting the acid eroding his words. He remembered the first time he had been ill on this side of the Atlantic. On oysters. He turned. “He almost killed you. I almost killed you. Yesterday. I couldn’t stop. You tried to kill yourself. And do you know what, Oyster? You killed us. Killed me. Whatever it was that was holding me back despite all the other bullshit I have been through – half of it simply by virtue of knowing you - stopped with your heart on that hospital bed. And I can’t even blame you anymore! There is no justice to it. And here now I’ve gone and met all of Andre’s expectations of me. I beat this man, this man I’d met an hour before all but to his death because I hadn’t liked what he had said. Then I had the audacity to sleep with my married accomplice. Whom I just want to help out of another bad situation. She wants ‘normal’. I can’t give her that and the worst of it is I could have once. I could have if not for-”

“You have to get over this,” Hewlett spoke, grabbing his cheeks and forcing him to face him. He was slow, clear, questionably short and precise. “I’m weak and indecisive, you were always right, I always bloody have been. But I am here. I’m not leaving. Do you understand? We won’t let him win. And you -you are better than this. You are better than Andre. You have a name. Make sure he never does. Discredit him. Disprove his hypothesis. Rise above whatever he thinks of your capacity to -”

“I’ve already proven it.”

“Not if Arnold is never found.”

“Pardon?” Simcoe stared.

Hewlett swallowed. “He is wrong you know. Andre. It isn’t fear that forces people to act in impossible circumstances. Its love. You don’t see it but you saved my life. And for all the many ways it is worse, and Christ sometimes I swear I -,” he scowled. He stopped. “I, I diverge … for all the many ways you find of making it unpleasant, my life is ultimately better because you - for whatever godforsaken reason - continue to insert yourself into it. I mean to keep you there if it means finishing what you and Mary started. I have to,” he nodded, assured. “It is what’s done.” By which, Simcoe assumed, he meant ‘it is what you would do in my place.’

He was not certain that he agreed with the implication, nor was he convinced that Hewlett meant anything of which he spoke.

“This won’t redeem you,” Simcoe said, leaning back away from his rival. “Or me. It won’t change any of what has happened.”

“But it will stop it from surfacing,” Hewlett insisted with a firm expression. Firm, Simcoe thought, but not tense. “I don’t think either of us need redemption. I think we need to take certain measures to try to protect the rest of our team. I think we need to find ways of preventing any additional evidence to surface in support of this hypothesis. I think we both need a cigarette,” he bit his lip. Simcoe nodded. “Finally,” Hewlett said, “I think it clear that Doctor John Andre vastly underestimates me. It is not redemption I seek, John. It is revenge.”

So it was.

Simcoe smiled caustically. He had always been right on some level about Hewlett, that he was still the same lad who had limped from his sickbed to shoot his own horse in its head beneath his practiced politeness and pretentions. Hewlett mirrored his smirk.

Simcoe read in words that had not been spoken what he was sad to again recognize as all he ever wished to know. “You’re right mental, you realise,” he said, pulling a pack of Gauloises from one of his desk drawers. He rose to retrieve a bottle of whiskey from one of his cabinets along with three of the four tumblers he had received as a set – a souvenir the friend he had boarded with for six years of his schooling sent along to America when business had unexpectedly brought him to Scotland a winter past. “Anna’s going to murder you for this,” he said after filling two cups with sprits, lighting a fag and ashing it in the third.

“Maybe,” Hewlett conceded. “She let me have a donut earlier so let that stand to the presence of hope.”

“Has that cholesterol?”

“Presumably.”

 

* * *

 

Part of John Graves Simcoe would always wonder at how little the files and the conversation that followed altered his relationship with Edmund Hewlett for the few weeks that remained to them.  It was short-lived and marked by the same snide stares and cruel quips, but for the first time he saw their strange endearment in enmity as being equal. Perhaps, he would consider long after ‘too late’ had passed, it always had been. Hewlett spoke but he did not hear him and he did not stare intensely enough to follow. Instead, he let the drink numb and burn as he swallowed, thinking of what he had to fight for rather than what he stood to lose.

“We’re good, right?” he asked after a while.

“Never,” he was told. “Just better than everyone else.”

It felt an accurate assessment.

 

**Part I – The End.**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … It has been a while since we have actually had a Hewlett POV, hasn’t it? Gee. Wonder what he is thinking through all this...
> 
> I am sure that somewhere within this monstrosity there is a term I ought to define or explain, but I am going to leave it this round. Instead I am just going to thank you for reading if you have made it this far. I recognize from the lack of response that the past two chapters came as something of a disappointment to the majority of you, and tempted as I am to apologise, I would rather just thank you all for sticking it out with me despite that.
> 
> They say write what you know - honestly, I am surprised I found a way of relating to an audience with Hide and Seek, full stop. I really can’t tell you enough how appreciative I have been of the level of acceptance this weird ode to immigration has gotten. Lately, however, I feel that I have been unable to connect with you in any meaningful way. And that is fine. But this may well be where we are meant to part. So thank you, once again. It has been an absolute pleasure writing for you over the past year. As always, all my best.
> 
> Comments and Kudos are more than appreciated - they motivate me to continue. And no, I am not done, not by far. This is just the half time whistle. Cheers.
> 
> XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up Next: Anyway, here’s Wonderwall


	26. The Stand In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aberdeen blows Hewlett’s transmission and Townsend’s cover. Abe watches his entire life blow up before him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are back with the beginning of **Part Two** of this tome, lovely faces! And I’ve managed to hit you with something for the first time in what feels like an eternity that weighs in at (just!) under ten thousand words. Congrats on my brevity, I believe, may well be in order. XD
> 
> But first, you want to do the _thing_? Of course you do.  
>  Possible trigger warnings may include: self-loathing born of sexual orientation, marital troubles (jealousy, control), extramarital affairs, international economics, Black Lives Matter / Blue Lives Matter, lightly referenced police brutality, espionage, materialism, rejection, the side effects of copious amounts of caffeine, drug use, and that very particular, acute pain of having your hair braided when it is done right.  
>  _Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen bitte fragen Sie Ihren Arzt oder Apotheker._
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy!

Abraham Woodhull was so tired it felt perverse. The cool air damp with morning mist made his dry, bloodshot eyes burn all the more. Blinking sharpened the contrast more than it lessened the sting. He looked at the number plate, at his fingers, at what Robert Rogers thought of as his work. Abe was getting nowhere. He adjusted his position, shifting his balance from his toes and kneecaps to the first thigh to meet the cold cement floor of his contractor’s home garage. For a moment he simply sat, taking comfort in the chill that climbed from the oil-stained concrete up through his spine. He looked again at his fingers – tips calloused, red and raw from the set he had played at a sold-out city venue the night before. His nails, he noted – not for the first time that morning – were kept too short to be of much use to the task at hand. Abe pulled an extra pick from the pocket of his ripped, dark wash jeans and with it a fragmented memory of Mary smiling, commenting on its colour when she had first seen it among hundreds of others in a candy jar at a local guitar shop. Abe had bought it – a twenty-cent splurge - winking at his then bride-to-be. He had bought it back when they used to do things together. Back when he was trying to be someone else. Back when it seemed it might prove successful in that venture. Back when his ideals had yet to form and Mary’s had yet to be called to question.

Abe used the old pick to pick at the vehicle registration sticker on the number plate of his wife’s Jeep Liberty, due to expire at the month’s end.

Once he found his way in, the tab peeled off easily, aided by the moisture of the morning air -thick in the uninsulated garage - just as Rogers said it would. Abe rose, taking the decal to the work truck the man he hesitated to think of as an ally wanted it on.

Though there was little else he could say in the his praise, Rogers lived a far more interesting life than Abe’s own had proven up until the morning before. After driving back to Setauket from his gig with two bags of take-out for the missing senator they meant to move to another safe house as precaution, the Scot told him that he worked out a deal with one (of the perhaps three) Broadway sensations Abe could name without effort; a deal allowing him to store his work-truck in the private park house attached to her Manhattan home for a few weeks.

“ _Worth mair than thes propertee_ ,” Rogers commented, “ _a city parking spot._ _Ridiciloos_.”

“ _You doing work downtown?_ ” Abe asked, hoping to attach himself to something paid.

“ _I don’t want ta leave anythin’ ’at can be considered evidence roon whare tae fuzz is lookin’_ ,” Rogers explained. “ _They’ll nae be checkin' in oan mah hen mukker, 'at much is assure_.”

It made sense – it made about as much sense as Abe could make out of an accent thickened by a night of whiskey. Rogers went on to suggest that they switch registration stickers as Abe’s was about to expire – it would buy the Woodhulls three extra months on renewal and give Rogers grounds on which he could explain why he needed to park his car away from prying eyes. Philomena had sounded distraught on the line when she rang asking for a favour, he said. She did not question the demand Rogers gave her in exchange, but she might. She always might.

“ _Forgive me, but how do you know Philomena Cheer of all people?_ ” Abe asked.

“ _Hoo dae ye nae?_ ” Rogers gawked.

She had worked at DeJong Tavern ten years ago, a time - as Abe reminded Rogers in his rebuttal - when he had been too young to drink legally yet not so naïve as to think of trying to sneak into the only watering hole in his hometown of eight-hundred souls with a fake ID. The Scot laughed, telling Abe that he was smarter than he looked.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, it okay if instead of putting your sticker on my plate I take Hew’s? That will give me until August to sort it.” Abe asked when Rogers returned with what he considered breakfast – orange juice, black coffee and two non-descript white tablets that could have been anything from ibuprofen to oxycodone. Abe frowned. This was a poor excuse for a halfway house, an even worse answer for a hide out.

“Thocht yoo’d boak at eggs by now,” Rogers defended the meal on the tray he set on the floor between them.

“Though you people did toast and beans and that.”

“Might in tae sooth,” Rogers shrugged.  

“Can I at least get an ‘Iron Brew’ then?” Abe muttered, trying to seem worldlier than he knew himself to be.

“Nae. That’s got vitamins,” Rogers indicated with his eyes to the juice.

Abe took a sip. “I don’t need the pills,” he said when the Scot cautioned him not to be too quick about it. “Save them for your boarders.”

“Thankless fuck,” Rogers replied, “thocht yoo were tryin’ tae pass yerself for a rock star.”

“I can’t much drink after a gig what with the … the package,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. At this Rogers laughed hardily, advising him that there was nothing in this world of the next he could code as ‘ _package_ ’ without having it sound illicit.

Abe agreed after a moment’s reflection and asked permission to take Hewlett’s registration stick for his own again. Again, Rogers laughed, “Yer tae worst criminal I’ve ever in mah life met, so ya are.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” Abe straightened, making his still-raw throat produce a harder sound. He was not a criminal. He was a patriot. He was only here to do Rogers’s bidding until he could figure out a means of helping an American war hero out of a hostage situation without getting everyone he loved killed in the process. He glared at the Scotsman as he continued to peel at the registration sticker with the pink pick that reminded him of the boy he had been and the girl he had now all but lost.

“Take it,” Rogers knelt for a moment and slapped Abe on the shoulder in comradery, hard enough to leave a lingering sting. After Abe traded his decal for Rogers’s, Rogers’s for Hewlett’s and Hewlett’s for his own, he took one of the two pills he hoped to be an aspirin and swallowed it quickly with a gulp of still-hot coffee. “Atta’boy,” Rogers congratulated him. “Get it down ya.”

Rogers explained all the while that it would take him weeks to repair Hewlett’s transmission. He did not have the tools for it and he would need to order a replacement for the clutch. He said all of this while shaking his head, doubtlessly trying to imagine how so much reckless damage could have been done to a flashy sports car owned by his ever-cautious compatriot.

Abe knew but wished he did not.  

Rogers continued to speak but Abe was suddenly far away. He was in another garage on the nicer side of town, the place where he had found himself two mornings before when DI Tallmadge’s team had come to sweep his father’s country residence for evidence linking Edmund Hewlett to Benedict Arnold’s disappearance. He was precisely where he was standing when his world effectively ended, when he heard through the vent that his wife was being treated as a suspect, and that the alibi she had provided – an alibi the detectives could not disprove despite their best efforts – spoke of her having given herself to another man at the time in question.

No. Not a man. A monster.

“Did you say anything to my wife?” Abe interrupted.

“About tae dry wall an’ insolation? Aye. What of it?” Rogers answered.

Abe said nothing in reply.

He had hoped for a confrontation. He had hoped to hear the same sorts of threats he imagined Rogers making against his wife, making her run into the arms of someone even more unhinged in hopes of immediate protection. But Mary did not flee from her problems and Rogers never bluffed. If she knew of Arnold’s whereabouts and her husband’s involvement, Mary would be dead.

Of that, he was now certain.

Abe remembered calling her the night of the disappearance after band practice. He remembered waiting, waiting until he ordered another round, until he heard another of Rob’s snide comments about his skill at chess and decided to take him at his challenge.

He remembered winning.

Days later, he remembered what it was to lose.

For a moment, he considered that Mary must often feel this way, broken by perceived betrayal – seeking answers for his absence and arriving at her own. He was bitter. He was not the man his wife had thought she married - sentiment present circumstance now forced him to confess within the once-quiet confines of his crazed mind. He could not keep pretending to her, to himself, that he was his older brother, that he was anything like him or that he ever truly had been.

There were times when his long-lived lie felt as though it was the only truth he had.

 

* * *

 

Abe Woodhull had been a wunderkind. He had been his father’s favourite until Thomas was made holy by the holes put into him in a violent act of vicinity. Thomas had happened upon and armed robbery which he had then tried to stop as the direct result of teenage Abe having accidently texted him the wrong address at which to pick him up at after his track meet.

Thomas’s death had not been instant.

Abe’s had been.

He remembered waiting alone in hallway outside his brother’s hospital room where his father held the hand of his first-born, unable to let go long enough to give Abe time to say his own farewells. His father waited for the inevitable with Thomas and the machines that kept him alive for forty-one minutes after the surgeons had told them there was no hope.

He passed away at 1:26 AM. Abe had been dead for nearly an hour at that point, yet none of the doctors or nurses present took any notice.

Sometimes Abe would find himself alone driving back from a concert, note the hour, pull off to the emergency lane and say to himself all of the things he could not say to his brother years before. Sometimes he would repeat ‘ _I’m sorry, so sorry_.’ until the phrase became monosyllabic and ceased to have meaning. Sometimes he would cry because he missed his brother. Sometimes he would cry because he could not remember him clearly. Sometimes he would cry because he missed his sense of self. Sometimes because he hated the man he had let sudden loss turn him into more than he could ever possibly put to verse.

The months after Thomas Woodhull’s death had been empty. Abe could not keep up in the university classes which he once excelled in without effort. Often he failed to attend. His father had been too distraught to voice his disappointment, to say much of anything. Abe began to hear in his silence ‘ _I wish it had been you’_. He shared the sentiment. He switched majors sophomore year. He joined a fraternity. He did the sorts of things Thomas had done while at Columbia, and in so he felt the loss of his brother again. And in so he felt lost to himself.

And then he got a call from a girl he did not remember giving his number to.

And then he got married.

And he had been happy then.

And so too had she.

But it was harder to pretend to be another boy for sake of the woman he was living with, for his father, for himself, when life otherwise demanded that he be a man. Abe loved his son, he loved his wife, but two years and twenty odd ‘ _who is she’_ s into their union he had found that he could no longer pretend to himself that he would ever be _in_ love with Mary Grant, now Mary Woodhull.

Every time the question was raised, he became less responsive to it. Abe had broken things off with the dark-eyed girl he dated in high school when it became clear to him that no amount of prayer or sin would ever be enough to ‘correct’ his sexuality. He had not given her an explanation for fear that she would out him in her anger.

He sometimes thought he owed one to his wife.

That he owed her at least something in return for the lies she told herself to normalize him.

They had been married for around four years when she first brought up separation. Abe feared the freedom it would give him. He feared what was left of a relationship with his father would evaporate, that he would never have a proper relationship with his son, or, as he had told Mary, that his father would work out a custody agreement with whichever justice was overseeing the proceedings such that Sprout would grow up without a mother. Like he had. Like she had.

That he would never have let that happen did not enter the conversation if it had ever entered her mind. Maybe she thought him that selfish, and maybe, when it came to his family, he indeed was.

For all of Mary’s questions and quiet seething, for all of her accusations and outbursts – it had become clear to Abe over time that he was the ‘jealous one’ in their marriage. And why wouldn’t he be? As he saw it, he was the only one with anything to lose should they part.

Four years into their union the Woodhulls began going to couples’ consoling. It did not work because Abe was not honest, because as the son of a conservative state justice who had written acidic descent against New York’s Marriage Equality Act in 2011 he _could not_ be honest, but he had given enough to make her say. To make ‘them’ work.

They were married for five years when they bought a house together - that is to say, when Mary bought a house at his bequest and Abe convinced his father to co-sign on the mortgage. They were two weeks away from moving in when their property failed to pass inspection.

They had since been living with his father, his father’s lodger, and their own rapidly accruing debt.

Abe hated his father’s home. He hated Hewlett. He hated that the other childhood prodigy who had come to replace him had had no problem throwing himself into his studies or into drugs or drink or whatever else he had on hand when faced with personal tragedy. He hated his lies. His honesty. He hated that Hewlett was so much of the man whom he might have otherwise become if he could have overcome himself that he was now engaged to his ex.  

But on this particular Sunday morning, what Abe really hated about the boarder, was the Jaguar XJR now sitting in Robert Rogers’s garage.

 

* * *

 

When Abe came home on Friday night, which was to say, when Abe came home at three o’clock on Saturday morning after a night of trying to help Arnold piece together exactly what happened since he had arrived in New York, Mary asked him, as she always did, where he had been, who ‘she’ was, and why he had not answered his phone.

He had offered Robert Townsend as an excuse. Rob was always a safe bet. Rob never did anything unless forced, and only then with extreme reluctance and noted dissatisfaction. It had seemed more than reasonable for Abe to assume that Rob had been in his apartment the night before after getting off from work. And Rob would cover. With or without question, Rob would cover. He was one of the two people who knew that if Abe was late coming home, it was usually because he had needed a few minutes to try to pull himself together at some rest stop. That he needed a few minutes to convince himself to continue being the man he thought Thomas might have been so that he might prove a good and decent role model for his brother’s namesake when he made him breakfast and took him to school in the morning.

Rob would cover. As he always had. But then this happened often enough that there would be no reason for his wife to ask for any verification.

And Mary hadn’t.

When Abe then tried to bring up what he had overheard from Hewlett’s quarters that morning, or rather, a morning past; when he tried to approach her about a statement she had given the police, Mary gave him a chaste kiss and told him curtly that everyone in Setauket was being treated as a suspect until they had been ruled out. He himself as well. There was nothing to worry about. Let Tallmadge do his job. With that, she turned over and pulled more of the blanket to her side of the bed.

He did not pursue it. Much in the manner that he then felt confident Mary would not openly question his own false alibi, he let it go. He had no choice. She let out a snort that she thought mimicked a snore well enough, indicating that he, too, had ought to pretend to sleep so that she could search his phone for evidence he would have already erased had it existed. As she did every night he came home late.

And if she happened to ask, Rob would cover. As he always had. Of this, he had been confident.

When Abe got up at four hours later to make breakfast for his family as he did every Saturday morning, however, he found the whole number of them in the kitchen along with ‘the Hewletts’, surrounding a sobbing Aberdeen. Surrounding the hysterical Haitian au pair who was about to dispel the rumour of Robert Townsend for Mary, for him, forever.

 

* * *

 

Aberdeen bought three $16 cappuccinos at The Newsroom and had been treated to a forth when she began relaying the story of how she had come to possess Edmund Hewlett’s imported sports car. Robert Townsend was otherwise a seemingly difficult man to impress – he had little need for the sorts of niceties that white people took as polite and everyone else found utterly patronizing. He had never forced his lips into a smile absent of feeling – but he had smiled, if only for a fleeting moment, when he saw her approach his bar in her borrowed dress. Of this, she was certain; for she had _made_ certain there could be no other possible or plausible outcome of her efforts.

She had spent the better part of the morning at her friend Zipporah’s flat having her hair braided while Thomas laughed at the faces she made under distress the way he had at the silly expressions she had made with at him intent when he was just a baby. Now, it was involuntary - Aberdeen felt as though she was being scalped. _‘Beauty is pain!’_ the girl she sat with in her history and chemistry courses at community college warned each time Aberdeen spoke in French – correctly guessing the Haitian’s outbursts to be a array of curses of the Vodoun variant. Unfortunately, there was no spell she knew of that worked as well on hair as two and a half hours of Zipporah’s fingers.  

She arrived back at Whitehall mid-afternoon and, after making Thomas a late lunch and playing with him on the swing-set until he grew tired enough to nap, she took a quick evaluation of Mary and Anna’s closets, texting them both over WhatsApp to ask if she could borrow a few choice pieces. As much as she had enjoyed the sentiment of sisterhood she had shared with the girls the night before, she did not wait for a reply. She had already shortened the hem and taken in the waste of Anna’s vintage Channel to insure that it fit her exactly as it had her new housemate by the time Anna sent her a

>> Go for it!<<

with a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji two hours later. In Mary’s black patent Louboutin’s  Aberdeen felt nearly as tall as the Statue of Liberty. She felt like the city she loved. The city, she feared after night had fallen, that for all of her hard work and suffering she might never get to see.

Aberdeen eventually knocked on the door to Hewlett’s apartment to find the two women whose clothes she wore looking as distraught as she felt. When she asked where Edmund was, Anna began to weep, causing Aberdeen to worry that something terrible had happened to her housemate – and, of more immediate concern, to his Jaguar, but she did not to bring this up. Instead, she offered to see if they had any ice cream left. Anna cried harder. Mary seemed to understand and so Aberdeen decided it was best to pretend she did as well. She sat on the edge of the bed and watched the rest of the Gossip Girl episode that they had all been engrossed in the night before. And the one that followed.

When Hewlett eventually came back at around nine – two hours! – Aberdeen informed him, after he said that she could use his wheels, she speed into the city, less interested in where he had been and what had been holding him up than he seemed to be in disclosing his secrets to the two women who wanted them.

As for Aberdeen, she already had nearly everything she ever dreamed of in Hewlett’s keys. She bought herself a souvenir by intentionally speeding through a photo-enforced intersection – something she happily thought she would later change into her Facebook profile picture so that all of her friends in Port au Prince could see how well she was doing. How she had made it in America.

Robert Townsend did not complimented her when she arrived. He did, however, bring her the first of the three coffees she had paid for herself and the salad she had ordered because conventional dating wisdom told her this was what was done – that men believed women did not eat and that they needed to have this misconception enforced for their own egos. Robert said _‘Very good, Mademoiselle’_ when she ordered and when he brought out her plate – three pieces of lettuce with apple slices, a single crushed walnut and something that tasted like a vegetable but that she could not identify beyond that. Yes, she thought. Very good. But wasn’t the verbial construction ‘well’? She would need to consult Abigail – the only writer she knew or had frankly ever met - at some later time when the single-mum was not boxing up her townhouse while eating ‘literal’ or ‘figurative’ ice cream. They would be living under the same roof soon enough. She would ask then. Afterward she would tell Robert Townsend about the difference between ‘good and ‘well’ if it turned out she was right and he would appreciate it - or so she reasoned - because she had once overheard him correcting Caleb Brewster’s grammar. From what she knew of the English-speaking internet, grammar was the sort of thing educated people spent an awful lot of time correcting in one another. It was ‘manners’, as Mary would say.

She overheard Robert arguing with an older, portly man that it was not his job to serve drinks, though he may from time to time. Aberdeen looked at herself in the mirror behind the bar. She looked at her emptied cup. She looked down at her borrowed heels – a size too small for her – and wondered if she had already been the cause of a fight. Oh course she had. She was a ‘Very Good Mademoiselle’. Perhaps that was what Robert had meant. After winking once again at her own reflection, she caught a glimpse in the mirror of Peggy Shippen sitting at a table in the corner. She considered waving –for the sake of manners- until she recognized the man Peggy was with.

“Ee is meant to be in rehab! And she! She is meant to be in Philadelphia!” Aberdeen said emphatically to Robert when she turned back to the bar. She had not heard him approach, but there he was – looking gorgeous in a black cashmere turtleneck pouring a glass of wine; watching her watch them. Aberdeen explained without awaiting a further prompt how on Tuesday night, Peggy had gone out on a date with Dr André if only for the purposes of trying to get information about Hewlett with which to convince Anna to reconsider. She pulled out her phone, showing the series of texts that confirmed the interaction.

Robert glanced at the device with what Aberdeen interpreted to be genuine interest.

“The next day,” she whispered, “Dr André resigned from ‘is research position at Columbia due to something … how you say … conflict of interest? And ee left ‘is job to fix ze problem ee ‘as with alcohol. But I think not that ee does this. No. I think not that ee comes back to work either. Abigail said that ee might lose ‘is credentials and eet might be ‘er fault but she said not why. And Peggy!” she snorted. Jordan had once remarked that Peggy Shippen started the #BlueLivesMatter hashtag on Twitter, which was enough for Aberdeen - who spent much of her free time retweeting every report of police violence in minority communities that she could find - to deeply mistrust the former governor’s daughter. She saw Robert gazing into her eyes with his bright intensity. Aberdeen knew in that moment that she should say nothing further if only for the reality that conventional dating wisdom informed her that politics were best discussed after promises had already been made, but she was here and he seemed intrigued and she had nothing else. “Peggy … well you know, every major media outlet reports that she ‘ad arranged to meet that night with Senator Arnold. On Tuesday!” she realised as she spoke. “On the night ‘ee disappeared and she was with André.”

It occurred to Aberdeen that she might also report this to someone, that this was something important. That the cops did not know. Peggy denied the interaction with Arnold had ever taken place, the same way in which she denied using social media at all, but that was to say nothing. This might interest the police or, at the very least, the public opinion makers. “Euh … your friend, ze one there,” she pointed, “Ee ‘as a newspaper in zis very building, does ee not?” Robert suddenly seemed very far away. Aberdeen took a photo quickly, discreetly, before putting her phone back into her expensive handbag, which she left on the bar for display.

“I’ll take care of it,” Robert said, before offering her the glass of wine that he had intended for the good doctor gone dry.

“I shouldn’t,” Aberdeen smiled. “I’m driving. I’ll take another coffee though.”

“I’ll join you.”

And with that, until the morning after, until the man whose car her ‘date’ would later wreck asked her to repeat every detail about John André and his date, Aberdeen had all but forgotten the pair completely.

 

* * *

 

At 3 AM on Saturday morning, Aberdeen raced at 207 mph to the academic institution she attended part-time - in part because she wanted to see what 510 PS could do on the open road, in part because after four cups of coffee she _really_ needed to use the restroom but had not wanted to say anything to Robert back at the restaurant. She imagined what the engine’s full potential might be, that was until she glanced at her passenger who himself seemed assured in that moment of certain death. The deceleration to 70 was surprisingly smooth.

“Better?” she winked. Robert did not answer. “It will be your turn in a minute,” she said.

Robert Townsend had been extremely interested in the car, or, moreover, the way she had come to acquire it. Seeing her opportunity to truly impress him, Aberdeen told the story of the obnoxious Parisian having a very loud conversation with someone in Tel Aviv – and also, she thought, others, but she had not remembered their names and had forgotten to write them down.

“Write them down?” he asked.

“I … Mr Eulett … euh … Edmund, ee asked me to take notes, they were speaking in French, you see. I think ee assumed the conversation was about Anna, who this La Fayette had just been interrogating with ‘Amilton – you know – like ze musical?” Robert nodded. “And ze, ze ‘andsom one who Nancy Grace says is a rapist. From NYPD.”

“Tallmadge … and he’s not. He was acquitted.”

“That doesn’t mean much though,” Aberdeen argued. “Eulett will be acquitted too. I think. Ee has ze connections necessary.”

“Acquitted,” Robert repeated. “Of what exactly? What, what information did he bribe you into uncovering for him?” He touched her hand lightly. Aberdeen felt a shutter as opposed to a spark.

In hindsight, it had been a bad time to hand over the keys in her school’s dimly lit, otherwise empty car park. She considered not returning after she went to use the toilets in the gym that was never locked, but Aberdeen reasoned that she had a nice car, new weave, and that this might well be her only chance at destiny.

Two minutes into teaching Robert Townsend to drive a stick, too flustered to tell him to release the clutch, the car would not move.

 

* * *

 

“EULETT! I’M SO SORRY!” Aberdeen wept loudly, blowing through yet another tissue. Mary continued to hug her. Anna turned to the three men seated on the opposite side of the breakfast table, her dark eyes widened with warning, bulging, begging her bridegroom to speak up.

Edmund Hewlett sighed deeply. “Ah - as long as your, as long as you’re alright Aberdeen, that is all that matters … I suppose. It was good that you called a tow truck and had them bring the vehicle to Rogers.” Abe heard him continue under his breath, “I don’t know that I can afford a shop at the moment.”

“Eet is not alright!” Aberdeen dry-heaved. “Eet was ‘orrible! Ze date only got worse from there. Rob, ee would not let me order an Über on my phone, ee said ee would order a ‘special Über’ and I thought at first he was being a gentleman but ee, ee, then ‘ee -” she began to sob once more. Richard Woodhull rose. He brought her a roll of paper towels from the kitchen counter to use as an alternate to tissues – to flimsy to fight the flood. After thanking him in French and blowing her nose twice, Aberdeen continued. “Ee took out ‘is badge.”

“His what?” Abe gaped. He suddenly found himself searched across the table though he remained seated, his feet on the floor.

“ _’Is badge!_ I knew then that ee was only trying to use me for information. Jordan told me not to say anything without an attorney present and this I told ‘im.” She crossed her arms. “But I don’t even know that Jordan can be my lawyer anymore now that ee ‘as broken up with Abigail and I don’t want to take sides in this just like Anna isn’t taking sides in this - but what if I need legal representation?” She looked pleadingly at Abe’s father. “It is too late for me to be all _‘bros before ohs’_ -”

“What precisely was said?” Judge Woodhull asked sternly, more, Abe saw, as a means on concealing his concern that in chastisement.

“I know my rights,” Aberdeen insisted.

Hewlett rose. “Your honour, with regard to the conversation Aberdeen and I overheard the Frenchmen having in the foyer on Wednesday morning, from what we understand, what … what Aberdeen wrote down, the international community seems to have as much vested interest in recovering Senator Arnold as we in America do,” Hewlett offered diplomatically. “Aberdeen,” he turned to address the au pair from behind clenched teeth, “I hardly think -”

“When ze ‘special Über’ showed up,” Aberdeen interrupted to Abe’s great relief - himself more interested in her telling of events than in more of Hewlett’s lies - “eet was two men in nice suits who identified themselves as Agents Cato and Mulligan and called Robert ‘Agent Culper Jr’ – Culper, like our street with an added adjective. They were both wearing bespoke suits – like the kind Eulett, euh, sorry, Edmund wears normally. I got in the car with them because I was afraid something worse would ‘appen if I didn’t and set my phone on record.” Aberdeen dramatically raised her hands to her breast as she straightened her posture. “My death, I thought, should at least mean something. Robert told me, well here, listen -”

She played a gritty recording on her mobile of Robert Townsend explaining that around a year ago his government had purchased his way into an establishment suspected of printing counterfeit money and sending it abroad - hundred dollar bills that had made their way primarily into the floorboards of peasant homes of countries like North Korea. He finally had enough evidence for his bosses – he indicated to the other two men - to organize a raid. If he had acted independently tonight, he would have risked blowing his cover and a year’s worth of preparation. He was not working the Arnold investigation, but he had consulted with his bosses and they thought the tidbit Aberdeen had offered about Peggy and Andre worthy of passing on to the ADIC. Anything she offered his colleagues would be kept confidential and was on a voluntary basis, but the law required him to advise her that if she were to sign a sworn statement it could serve as testimony and would have the weight of a legal document.

Aberdeen stopped the recording or it stopped on its own. As everyone’s eyes danced around each other in tempered fear and anticipation, Aberdeen’s remained fixed on the judge, and his on her.

She spoke.

Aberdeen told that she was then brought into a room in a building in the city where she sat for 40 minutes with the two Über drivers in designer suits while they tried to convince her to tell them what she had been in the process of telling Mr Culper Jr. Aberdeen had remained silent. Eventually the man who identified himself as Mulligan left, she saw him arguing with Robert through the thin window on the door, though she could not hear what was said. Agent Cato told her he had never seen anyone take the right to remain silent so seriously, and while he commemorated her, she should realise that she was not in any trouble. She was not under arrest nor was she under suspicion, but any information she had, that she was willing to share, might save lives.

Aberdeen asked if she could leave. Cato asked her if she would wait for a moment, at which point he pulled out a folder and she discreetly hit record once more on her mobile when she in turn pulled a bottle of water out of her Louis Vuitton which she left on the desk for display.

“Play it,” Abe urged her. Aberdeen looked between him and his father and swallowed.

On the muffled recoding, Cato spoke into his own tape that he was showing her a photograph of Judge Richard Woodhull before asking her directly if she knew this man. Aberdeen said nothing, but the dragging of aluminium against linoleum could be heard. “I just got up,” she said. “Eet was ‘orrible and I’d nothing to tell them.”

As Aberdeen rose, Townsend, alias Culper Jr entered. He told Cato to put an end to it and took escorted his best-friend’s au pair out of the room they had elected to use for interrogation. Aberdeen cringed at the words ‘best friend’s au pair’ again when she heard them over the grainy audio. In that moment, Abe pitied her and wanted to tell her that she was also a ‘very good mademoiselle’, whatever the fuck that meant.

Townsend, Aberdeen relayed after pressing stop, apologised for the evening, as did Mulligan, who offered his hand and his card in case she changed her mind. Aberdeen squeezed the hand she had been given tightly, recognising that he was the sort of man to return the gesture with equal force. His Rolex slid from his wrist to hers without his noticing.

Robert Townsend followed her outside.  

“ _I can walk_ ,” she insisted when he offered her a ride. “ _There is a twenty-four 'our pawn shop two blocks from here and no one will question my trade because I am wearing nice clothes and I just want to go back to my nice car and my real friends taught me that everything is about appearances and you do not look so good as you did some 'ours ago, Sir!_ ”

“ _A pawn shop_?” he asked, wondering, doubtlessly what that had to do with anything.

She held up the Rolex.

After a minute had passed in silence, he asked, “ _You have a real talent for this sort of thing don’t you_?”

After a minute had passed in silence, she inquired, “ _Does Mr Woodhull know_?”

“ _No. I’m – it will be over for me soon. Let me, let me make this up to you_.”

 

* * *

 

“And did he?” Mary asked, squinting.

“He gave me two ticket to ze Culper Ring concert tonight. Oh, I can go, can’t I? Not for ‘im of course, for ze music.”

It was the nicest thing anyone attached to his household had ever said about his passions. “You are a very good mademoiselle, Aberdeen,” Abe smiled at her, trying to sound reassuring though his heart was racing. She would get over this. She had friends she could be honest around. When she smiled at him, Abe felt his isolation stronger than he had moments before.

“And I can take someone from you with me. If you want,” Aberdeen glanced about the table. Thomas reached at her from his high-stool. “Not you my sweet, you are too small.”

“I’ll go,” Richard Woodhull offered gruffly.

“Dad!”

There were three things in the world of which Abe felt entirely certain – he had to save the senator, he had no one whom he could trust to help, and he did _not_ want his father at the concert tonight. Abe was already faced with the impossible dual tasks of cajoling Caleb Brewster into an impromptu rendezvous with the detective inspector and confronting Robert Townsend, alias Culper Jr, about his day job - all while ensuring that neither of them understood his game plan. If they discovered what he and Rogers were hiding, Abe could not trust their safety.

He did not need his father around. He could not risk losing him.

He had already lost too much.

“Darling, ah – might I then trouble you for your car this morning?” he heard Hewlett say. Abe turned in his chair to face him. “I, that is I need to go downtown. There is something that Simcoe and I simply must see to -”

“Now?” Anna asked, angered.

“I fear it cannot wait.”

Anna shook her head slightly in confusing but gave an affirmative answer, telling him the keys were on one of the hooks by the front door. At this he rose, thanking her as he kissed her cheek. When she asked where they were going, however, he declined to respond.

If Abe were to extend to him the benefit of doubt, he might attribute this silence to the fact that Mary had interrupted Anna as she was speaking - grabbing Hewlett’s attention seconds before it registered with Abe.

Mary repeated, “I’ve been texting, I’ve been calling, I have half a mind to go there myself if I don’t hear something back from him soon. Please, please, Edmund, tell John that,” she stopped. “Tell him to -”

“John Graves Simcoe?” Abe asked. He repeated the name several times, with each iteration he could hear his voice growing louder. Thomas began to cry and Richard, scolding his son, brought him out of the room.

“Abraham!” Mary finally answered. “He is my financial advisor. I have every right to speak to him when ever so I chose. Need I remind you that what we are currently living from is _my_ money?”

“Ah, Mary I, I should doubt highly that it is what you … imagine.  I understand a bit of what – honestly it, it is not that I want there to be secrets between us,” he looked at Anna, at Aberdeen, then, slowly, at Abe, “in this household, but I fear it – it is, this, with Simcoe, it is really none of my business,” he sighed, “and so I am making it my own. A pattern I’ve admittedly fallen into as of late. Ah, at any rate,” he continued with forced mirth, “I am sure he will ring the instant we have this all sorted. I swear to you – his lack of response - it is nothing of what you might be thinking. I simply do not believe it my place to elaborate beyond that. Forgive me.”

“And what might we be thinking, Hewlett?” Abe asked, looking at Mary. “Is Simcoe your ‘financial advisor’ as well?”

“As a matter of fact,” Hewlett gave a quick nod before turning on his heel.

“Does ‘financial advisor’ mean the same thing as ‘ice cream’?” Aberdeen asked. Mary and Anna both met her with wide eyes. Abe narrowed his, told his wife in his exit that he would make breakfast tomorrow instead, and took off after Hewlett.

 

* * *

 

“Take me with you,” Abe demanded as the Scot elegantly climbed his way into the car the girl they had both known biblically had owned since high school graduation.

“Excuse me?” Hewlett stopped, rose, blinked.

“I need to go downtown. I need to see Rob right away. You heard that recording, my father-” he clambered as he tried to catch his breath.

“Abraham,” Hewlett cautioned. Abe took his name as the invitation he did not suspect Hewlett would otherwise extend him and opened the passenger door. Hewlett cleared his throat.

Abe spoke.

“ _My father_ is now under investigation because you -”

“What? Revised in his study on Thursday night? Lower your voice, Abraham, you forget yourself,” he said sharply. Hewlett got into the car, and indicated for him to do the same. Once the doors were closed, before the engine started, Hewlett reversed the accusation, stating that had Abe not been so vehement in his demands that the office be searched, the police would have never wasted their time and resources in that part of the house. Abe listened, wondering how Hewlett possibly knew of his ardent insistence on the matter. He had left the house hours before Tallmadge came with his team.

Hewlett looked beaten, exhausted. His once-pale visage looked like ink split on parchment, staining stretches of his skin with a tint nearly as dark as his eyes – which Abe had never known to reflect the slightest hint of light. He wished Hewlett was wearing tinted glasses in order to spare him from the taint of whatever he had suffered since last the spoke three mornings before. He wished he could look away, or that Hewlett would.

When his father’s tenant stopped speaking at one of his awkward intervals, Abe told him to drive. They both watched the road. Hewlett’s pace grew less erratic. Though he wore no wounds, Abe imagined his own appearance had worsened considerably since he had been confronted with the sort of secret he had not had years to practice hiding.

And now he had another. Robert Townsend. And Hewlett knew his name as well. He spoke lightly in an effort to reassure Abe. It had the opposite effect. Abe was glad for the road. He was glad for the distraction of the same trees blurring by time and again. They were driving in circles, he realised after what felt like too long. They were speaking in them as well, Abe thought, when it felt too late.

“As far as the FBI is concerned,” Hewlett said. “I imagine them to be bluffing. Clever as Aberdeen is at times … ah, it is unlikely that they did not realise when a recorder was in play. Ordinarily, all personal effects are handed over before an interrogation, no matter how informal. I would not put too much into this. I venture that you made something of an annoyance of yourself yesterday morning for Tallmadge and the Special Crimes Unit. They will realise in short order that you are of no particular significance and drop all inquires the moment you cease yours.”

The last phrase sounded like a threat. Or it didn’t and Abe was looking for contention. Hewlett circled the block once more and stopped in front of Whitehall. Abe again insisted that he be taken into the city. They were both going to Manhattan. Hewlett repeated that he did not know how long his business would be.

Abe worried his business had to do with Robert Townsend.

“I can find my own way back, then. We have to talk, you and I.”

“Very well,” Hewlett swallowed as he accelerated. “I apologise, Abraham. You are right. I made an assumption about your behaviour and used that to further my ends. The sweep, however, was clean - as I think it safe to say we both ultimately knew it would be. Your father is not at any risk. Regardless of what was said in anger on Wednesday morning at your breakfast table, if I thought my designs threatened your father in any way -”

“What are your ‘designs’? Honestly, what the fuck are you even still doing here? One minute you are planning to return to Europe and the next you’ve extended your lease, added another name to it and the same day _a senator goes missing_ ,” he said with unmasked accusation. “Then you tip off the press to the possible location of the crime scene – and again, like at Whitehall – there is no fucking evidence! But Anna lost her job because of you! Do you get that? You singlehandedly got DeJong’s shut down.”

“That is quite enough!”

 “I don’t know how you expect to benefit but even if you are being honest – even if you have nothing to do with Senator Arnold - you have put my friends, _my family_ at risk, Mr Hewlett, do you fucking understand that? The cops plan to interrogate Anna again – and Mary, Mary, _my wife Mary_ is herself a suspect,” he paused. “And so is your mate John. Did you know that?”

“Abraham, you truly fail to appreciate -”

Abe tallied on his fingers. Hewlett had at least ten close friends christened John yet had not paused for an instant to ask which of them the NYPD had taken an interest in. He must know from which last name Abe meant from Mary. From Mary and her ‘financial advisor’.

“Yesterday,” Abe informed him, “while two of Tallmadge’s subordinates were searching your room I hung around in the garage - under the air vent where you can hear everything that happens. I know what _my wife_ told the police.”

“Yesterday morning while the police were searching Whitehall,” Hewlett countered with a slight smirk, “I was down at 1PP gaining access to all of their case files. Trust me, it is not Mary they are after. If anyone, it is John Andre. I think perhaps you have met him a time or two?”

John Andre.

 _John_ Andre.

Abe held his breath. Of course! John Andre. Abe could forget Simcoe. Mary was good and honest and everything he himself was not, and it was tax season after all. He could forget Simcoe, he told himself again. The name Andre was familiar. Andre … André, as Aberdeen said it? No. He knew it from Rogers. He knew it from Arnold.

“Friend of yours?”

“Not quite.”

“That what you and Simcoe plan on ‘sorting’ this morning?”

“No.”

“How often has my wife been meeting with him recently?”

“Who?” Hewlett returned, as flatly as he had answered each question in the quick series.

He could not forget Simcoe.

As soon as Abe had inquired however, he realized he did not want to know. Not from Edmund Hewlett at any rate.

Hewlett offered nothing. He pushed the CD into the player it was half suspended from when the radio station began to run a block of commercials. Anna apparently still had awful taste in music.

 

* * *

 

“You spied on the police,” Abe said after they had pulled onto the highway.

“As did you,” Hewlett replied, adrift. It was as though he had forgotten that Abe sat beside him.

“I don’t know what business you think you have here but it needs to end. Are you a foreign agent? Is that why you made Aberdeen take Rob out? Like Peggy did with André? Fuck Hewlett, I don’t know what you are playing at - but Aberdeen, she is just a kid! And how did you know? About Rob? I didn’t even know and I’ve know him for years, I – who the fuck are _you_?”

“I’m a man who finds himself deeply embedded in a situation not of my own making but with disastrous potential for all of those I hold dear unless I do something about it. Aberdeen acted independently of me. I allowed her to borrow my car because she is a friend and because she asked and because,” he paused, “because I had no reason to believe that she would be so reckless as to do thousands of dollars of damage to my transmission.”

“So you are mad then?” Abe scoffed to himself.

“Furious,” Hewlett said without sounding it. It made Abe seem all the more paranoid and hysterical. He wondered how much the words he spoke betrayed him. “What good would it have done to add to her worries though? At any rate, it is far more important that she is alright, or that she will be. Poor dear.”

“What did you really have her translating? Who are Mulligan and Cato?” Abe inquired in a single breath.

“I have no idea,” Hewlett answered the last question that had been phrased.

“What did you have her translating?”

“Benedict Arnold is missing,” Hewlett said as he drove over into the emergency lane, slammed on the break, causing the car to screech to a halt. “No one in law enforcement believes him to be dead, they believe someone is giving him quarter somewhere in Setauket and mean to keep it that way in so long as it benefits the US in international relations. Now … Can I trust you?”

“Can I trust _you_?”

Hewlett nodded. “Try not to interrupt,” he said as he merged back into the eight o’clock traffic. “Simply listen. I will not repeat what I am about to tell you, what I – or rather, what Aberdeen overheard,” he took a deep breath. “While the NYPD is investigating the missing person case, there is international interest at play that means to profit from the instability this messy business is causing to the stock market, as such things tend to do. The longer Arnold is missing, the stronger Europe’s hand will be in negotiating a trade deal that our combined parliament and your congress have been working on since the Bush Era. Unforeseen problems within the EU – namely, the rise of right-wing nationalism -”

“Fascism.”

“That has parallels in _this beautiful country of yours_ ,” he continued, annoyed, “threatens to rip the trade union apart. Great Britain is already threatening to withdraw, and if they should, France will surely follow, and then I suppose there is the threat of having the Federal Republic of Germany with a number of client states,” he mused, “which if history serves as any indicator -”

“What has this to do with Arnold?”

“If the Euro remains slightly, though not significantly, stronger than the dollar, if there are economic reasons to remain united, Europe will. That is what the French are trying to ensure, and America is letting them profit to this end from Arnold because America needs this, too. So much of your economy is based overseas that you need a strong, solid trading partner that Europe can provide. Deals like these take decades, as I am sure you can well imagine, and this one in particular threatens to be undone by a war in the desert … essentially.”

“You mean by the refugee crisis in Europe becoming a strain on its resources and finances?”

Hewlett nodded. “Which is where Arnold enters the picture indirectly. Abraham – do you have any idea who Dr Martha Dandridge is?”

“I’ve read two of her books, back at university,” he lied. Abe knew her name from Breitbart and Fox. He knew her name from hearing Arnold mention it a few times, but that was to say nothing. Robert Rogers instructed him that the only thing people did in prison, rehab, or any other service the state ran to segregate society’s undesirables, was make yet more drug connections. As such, his medical cabinet was filled with any number of painkillers - prescription and otherwise - at all times. It was for that reason he insisted on moving the senator to his place from the safe house that had served them over the past week, despite Abe’s voiced concerns. It was a ‘precaution’ – by which, Abe supposed the contractor meant that it provided them with a steady means of making sure Arnold remained too drugged to plan an escape.

Still, the Pennsylvania representative was good for a semi-coherent conservative rant every now and again.

Hewlett became flustered as he continued.

“She – Dr Dandridge - was working on a study with Dr Andre that I – that I found out about yesterday, through more … illicit means. Its goal seems to be understanding ‘fear’, and understanding how that can be weaponized. It is apparently how the terrorist operate and now the Pentagon seeks to use their own tactics against them as traditional methods have been failing all of NATO's efforts thus far. But something went wrong and I imagine Arnold came to offer a correction.”

Suddenly much of what Arnold had to say made sense.

“Benedict Arnold as the chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee would have knowledge of and access to that,” Abe said under his breath. Hewlett clenched his jaw.

“He likely was here for a review of the project. Um. Something, something – and this was what I was able to get directly from my search yesterday - something recently went disastrously wrong within a related closed study and ah … the pharmaceutical funding is threating to pull. Arnold’s presence in New York City, the Trump rally, his having nothing else officially scheduled – not common for a politician I imagine – that is, I now believe that he was likely here to – well, that he was here in in relation to - I, I fear he might have since become the victim of his own weapon. Which is why I need – I need to find him.”

Abe had overheard the coppers talking about a Pfizer receipt and an obsession of DI Tallmadge. He thought about texting Caleb right away. He had to get a man on the inside, someone who could talk to Tallmadge directly, win over his sympathies. The police no longer had any reason to trust Abe himself, which, he supposed, looking over at Hewlett, might well have been the possible assassin’s intent. Abe constructed motive – Hewlett, as well as his European Union, likely profited from the market upheaval that Arnold’s disappearance caused. He likely benefited from the research as well – perhaps a wealthy relative was also a sponsor or he knew someone in service? Or maybe Hewlett was a terrorist as Arnold seemed to think. But Hewlett had never mentioned Pakistan or any other majority-Muslim country for that matter.

Abe swallowed. Questioned his own line of thought. Why would Hewlett tell him of any this? And what should he tell Brewster to get him onside enough to seduce Tallmadge –whom the drummer laughingly claimed had tried to flirt with him over the phone - that would spare his friend from the knowledge of Arnold’s hide-out?

And then Abe remembered the context in which he had heard the word ‘finance’ thrown around quite a lot recently. He remembered the other John and the alibi that his wife had given police. That is what he would have to tell Caleb. That he feared his wife was cheating with a man he considered might well be capable of murder. He wondered how Hewlett had come to attain all of his various contusions.

Abe longed for the secrets he had spent a lifetime concealing. He longed for his life to return to normal, even if normal meant misery.

“Where is the rest of the information coming from?” Abe asked after Hewlett pulled the car to a halt in front of The Rivington Gazette building at his request. “You could go to jail -”

“It was Anna’s plan,” Hewlett answered without answering.

Abe could not let his high-school sweetheart marry this man.

“How dare you involve her,” he spat.

“Believe me, Abraham. I tried everything not to, she involved herself.”

“And that is why you trust me to keep silent,” he realised aloud.

“I trust you to keep silent because I trust based on your recent … undertakings that you have as much interest in figuring out a way for us to all get out of this as I do.”

What had he noticed?

“Take me with you then,” Abe said as he refastened his seatbelt. He had no reason to trust Hewlett but he had few other options.

“No.”

“If you are planning on finding Andre … André, perhaps I could be of some assistance. I’ve done so for Robert Rogers in the past.”

“This isn’t about a gambling debt. Or even about Andre in the larger sense. Get out," he ordered. "I have to ambush Simcoe while I still have time on my side to launch a surprise attack and you would only be in the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have few if any contextual notes for you guys the go-around, but what the heck, I’m loquacious: 
> 
> Voodoo, or **Vodoun** is the official religion of Haiti – which, by the way is the only nation in the western hemisphere to have defeated three European super powers and the only in the world to have gained its independence as the result of a successful slave uprising. The history (particularly of the 18. Century) is _fascinating_ and nearly everything of Aberdeen’s H+S character and plotline is in some way derived from it. (If you feel you want to read ahead …) Her name is taken from the first and forth seasons of AMC’s Turn.
> 
> While many of the economics discussed in this chapter are loosely based on the news cycle circa sixteen months ago (at time of posting, who knows when you are reading this) that bit about **fake hundred dollar bills finding their way into the floorboards of North Korean homes** come from around 2011. Robert Townsend having any knowledge of an underground counterfeit operation being run out of a restaurant attached to a newspaper comes from an episode that aired around a year ago. Funny, that.
> 
> And for my fellow Europeans, **Breitbart** is an online, neoconservative media concern.
> 
> So! How much are you guys loving the final season? I was in former Yugoslavia for a few episodes, but I am caught up now and want to scream about it with each and every one of you. Hit me up any time in the comments or on that other hellsite I have linked in my profile.
> 
> Finally, thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last chapter and to everyone else who simply read. I appreciate all of your support more than you can ever imagine.
> 
> Hope you are having a lovely summer! XOXO – Tav 
> 
> Up Next: a love story in five acts


	27. The Promotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On their last morning together, Anna and Edmund discuss metaphysics, maths, murder and their upcoming association football match as they plot to save the world or, at least, get out from under it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, lovely faces! I’m back again – this time, surprise, surprise (no, really!) with an entirely too long scene that became its own update. Okay, I suspect there is nothing new to that but this time, we focus on Anna and Edmund being a relatively normal couple (…just helping each other deal with external, existential doubt, making bad jokes and uh, having a lot of oral sex. Evidently.)
> 
> Don’t worry. It is still the same slightly-fucked Hide and Seek you know and tolerate.
> 
> That said – before we do the _thing_ where I warn you about potentially upsetting material, let me give a quick shout out and offer all of you a recommendation. No. Recommendation sounds to my non-native ear a tad too trivial. What I have to do is hook you guys up with some **required reading** :
> 
>  
> 
> [ **Law & Order & Authori[tea]** ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4504110/chapters/10241874)
> 
>  
> 
> Celebrates the second anniversary of its publication date this week and I strongly compel each and every one of you to leave this page (right now!) and go give it a read (… and comment, kudo.) I don’t know that its author[ CalamityBean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityBean/pseuds/CalamityBean) and I have much overlap in terms of readership, but even if “Annlett” is not your thing, the beauty of her prose is enough reason to fall in love (as I did, with the English language) when I discovered this gem a few months after it was first published. You’ll feel yourself completely immersed in Calamity’s Setauket, feel the warmth of the steam of expertly brewed tea as it touches your lips before you taste, and where it gets really transcendent – even if you are a decidedly non-tea-drinker as I am - you’ll _enjoy_ it. Every last drop. The characters, as she depicts them are especially compelling; they come to life and force the reader to interact with them, their feelings and struggles in a way that is rare for any form of fiction. The plot is itself intriguing – and I can’t possible stress this enough without getting into spoilers – even if you are not otherwise keen on love stories, there is something here for you.
> 
> And the best part? _The title itself is a pun._
> 
> So, go – run off, and read something truly worthy your time. My Setauket will still be here when you are done. And honestly? It probably would not exist without the influence of LOA, which is only to say that reading that work made me want to become a better student of the English language, which forced me into using it regularly rather than just look at verb charts until my eyes blead. Being the little maths nerd I am, this is pretty much the highest compliment I can give.
> 
> So! 
> 
> **Warnings include but do not limit themselves to:** light sexual content, mild existential crises, misdirected anger and accusations and puns. Bad puns that will (heartbreakingly-! No, I’ll not spoil it. You have to get to the end of the chapter.) 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy!

Anna let the moment linger. She felt the light pull of his long fingers as they gently combed their way through her hair, her loose curls as tussled and tangled as their bodies had been the night before. Edmund was humming softly, subconsciously, as he did from time to time - a symphony that stirred her pulse as it tried to match his rhythm. Eyes still shut, Anna cuddled herself closer to him. The sound ceased. Some things, she thought, were simply too precious too touch. Too easily broken.

Not them.

No. She and Edmund were eternal. But moments were fleeting and Anna Strong was not yet ready to greet the grey dawn of the day she knew she was fated to bid her fiancé farewell.

“You awake?” he whispered.

“Do I have to be?” she groused.

“No … no, Love. Certainly not, if you would prefer to rest. I – forgive me if I -”

“Did you already shower?” Anna wrinkled her nose as she pulled her frame up along with her heavy eyelids. Resting her back against the headboard beside him, she allowed herself a rare giggle as she watched her lover’s face twist itself from awkward apology to hesitant delight. He still looked like Edmund when he looked at her that way - lips parted, gaze lowering slightly as his grin grew. Life, Anna considered as a blush crossed her cheeks, seemed less a series of connected catastrophes when he laughed. The world still _‘made sense’_ as her friend Peggy had said of Edmund’s bright smile when first she met the man, back when love had seemed to Anna more a fleeting thought than a force. Back when she had assumed and could nearly accept the reality that her feelings may never be returned. How removed her prior fears felt from present; how small her current problems seemed when compared against past doubt.

The memory of the Pennsylvanian cautiously evaluating Edmund through Abigail’s venetian blinds now felt as though it belonged to a previous century, rather than to what had scarcely been a week.

No, Anna realised. Not even.

It had only been six days.

It had been an aeon.

She had always been – Edmund said to her bafflement at the brevity of elapsed time – the Andromeda to his Perseus, his fortune and fate. ‘Always’, he repeated for measure, teasing that he would never otherwise use such an abstract to describe what could be expressed as a definite integral.

“Always,” Anna smiled back, shaking her head at the rest of it.

There must have been a point where they had not truly been a couple. Or perhaps there had not. Perhaps there simply existed some interval before the points at which they had made declarations of love and had been forced to defend them. Now here they were. And they were eternal. And time itself, Anna thought, must be a trick.

The room swelled with sunlight. The whole of the above-garage attic space that had been converted to an apartment at some stage between the parts of her childhood spent playing at Whitehall and the present seemed to glow - bathed in and brightened by the radiance from a tiny window partially obstructed by a telescope. Their setting paled when she looked upon her lustrous lover, and then, when their tired eyes met, it seemed altogether non-existent. Anna wished for distance to later feel as illusionary as time and space, but with this thought, the continuum once again showed itself to be tangible.

Nothing was certain but the moments they shared, but moments were fleeting, and the morning was not theirs alone.

But he was here and he was hers and he, too, refused to consider their love has having finite dimensions. That would be enough comfort and solace to sustain her through an extended separation. Just enough. Just. Anna bit her bottom lip as it began to tremble, closing a cut before her fiancé could see it bleed.

“Hm?” he puzzled, drawing his thumb across her chin. Anna smiled, feeling his un-moisturized, lightly calloused finger find the corner her mouth. He wore thick-rimmed spectacles rather than contacts; he had yet to shave his morning stubble. Anna wondered if he had ever before been this unassuming with anyone else or if she was the only one privileged enough to see him without his pretty pretentions put on display. She wondered how long it had been since he had known peace.

Edmund’s hair was slightly damp - undulant and dishevelled without product to smooth and straighten. He muttered a string of monosyllables when Anna twirled a strand between her thumb and forefinger, complimenting the thickness and texture she rarely was given chance to appreciate.

“You’re beautiful,” she said softly.

“I’m -” Edmund flustered, unable to agree or to arrive at an adjective of his own. He gently pulled her in as he sought to parry, “You, you are kind. Ah - I do hope I did not wake you, my dear.”

“Mmm. Mmm,” Anna lied.  She smelled mint and manufactured musk when she leaned in to kiss him, taking pause as time revealed another of its deceptions within the peculiarities of her fiancé’s face. “What time is it?” she asked as she turned away quickly, half in order to grab her phone with which she meant to check her loose estimation of the hour, half out of embarrassment as she remembered Edmund’s stated disgust with morning breath upon seeing it saw it reflected again in his sharp features. 

That particular conversation had taken place the previous Wednesday, she realised. Less than forty minutes before the rests of their lives fell apart.

Only four suns had since risen. 

“Hey,” Edmund said lightly as he tickled the back of the back of the neck. “Give us a kiss?”

On which day of the four, Anna smiled to herself, had he seen the light of dawn? She felt the bed shift as Edmund adjusted his weight, leaning forward to kiss her shoulders. Anna absentmindedly scrolled through the morning’s news and social media notifications, as had long been her habit.

“Don’t you want me to brush me teeth first?” she protested playfully as he turned her head, pulling her lips against his own.

“Darling,” he replied, parting with a cheeky grin, “I don’t _ever_ want us to leave this bed.”

“Oh. But we must,” Anna lamented, batting at him with her free hand as she quickly skimmed through the series of messages still causing the light on her mobile to flicker. “It’s _match day_.”  

Edmund sighed.

Edmund spoke.

He was normally keen to spend his Sunday morning engaged in sport – which, admittedly, was to say he was happy to put on a kit and watch from the back line as his more-eager mates pretend to play soccer, if only because it reminded them of home or homes they had known in semesters spent abroad. Seeing her still snoring in bed after he had emerged from his shower, however, had countered and conquered his resolve to spend the short time they still had in extended company.

He was content to leave his jersey on the dresser where it rested.

“I don’t ‘snore’. Girls don’t snore,” Anna corrected, the tip of her tongue then emerging through pressed lips.

“Still,” Edmund smiled, thinking it better not to offer confutation to his claim, “Today. It’s not about them, it is about us.”

Anna’s heart again ached. Broke. Blead.

It was very much about ‘them’ she suspected, despite his sentiment.

It was about the vacancy Edmund had been tasked to fill by those who reminded blissfully unaware of the battles he had unexpectedly found himself fighting on their behalf. It was about the team’s embittered captain. It was about the bruises that blotted his face and chest. It was about the terrible secrets he had tasked himself to keep. It was about the truth of the things he had said in anger the evening prior:

_‘The worst of it is, were I to have been told a year ago - five, ten, eighteen bloody years ago - of all of the troubles I’d find myself faced with today, the only matter that would fail to truly impress me is the reality that Simcoe managed to kill a bloke of some political significance, lose the damned corpse, frame me and then force me through an act of conscious to organize the cover-up. Its bullocks. The whole of this caring for someone you rather can’t stand, its -’_

It was exhaustion.

It was the result of the actions which Edmund had once easily assumed anyone else would take if confronted with his circumstance.

It was disappointment. It was doubt. It had wounded Anna to hear him speak in terms of defeat, it nearly killed her to hear him now use her as an excuse to abandon a duty he would have once felt himself bound to. 

Edmund had put the whole his faith in higher humanistic principles. He had been hurt.   

Anna would not permit another challenge to this conviction.

She had found in his faltering convictions a war worth waging.

Edmund’s assumptions on man’s nature, as much as the actions he took, made him admirable. Made her love him. It was the reason Anna felt she had to ensure that they made it out to the pitch this morning.

She knew herself, however, to be base by comparison.

Anna wanted, in truth, to stay here, timeless, comprehending rather than contemplating the concept of eternal love – countering his talk of mathematics with her metaphysical musings, making the morning about the two of them as she clandestinely held it ought to be. But in forcing herself, in forcing Edmund to otherwise carry on for all the people counting on them would give some credence to his more cherished ideals.

That was what he needed.

That, she realised, was the standard which her fiancé held others to by example. Had not the friend he claimed he ‘couldn’t stand’ - and who, for his part, matched and mirrored this very sentiment - saved Edmund’s life without want of acknowledgement or thanks? Had not that action alone disproven the whole of John André’s hypothesis?

Everyone who truly knew Edmund Hewlett, Anna decided, was made better by that virtue. He needed to hold himself to his own high-minded morals that the rest of them might when they all needed to most. Today, Edmund needed to be the leader she knew him to be. He needed to survive for all of their sakes.

“We’ll have forever,” she said.

“Forever,” he echoed.

Yet their buzzing devices told that time still existed as more than an abstract or romantic ideal for those counting the minutes until kick off. As it now stood, she and the player who had been appointed interim manager had a little less than two hours to make the drive across town to the field behind the local high school as they had every other Sunday since the one on which he had proposed putting a ‘platonic’ union on paper. Edmund pouted when she announced this. She felt her own face falter.

He was not ‘casual’, she realised, in his unassuming, dandily dishevelled appearance that matched with his present demeanour, but rather, he was a casualty. A corpse, still pretentious in pretending that he could convince her otherwise by any measure of kisses or compliments.

Or maybe it was himself he was trying to fool.

“Anna, love, please don’t think less of me when I say that I’d rather not,” he said, the tenderness of his voice transformed into a torment of which he would not speak.

“I couldn’t,” she said as she gripped the hand he rested on her kneecap. “But Edmund, I need you to show me, to show everyone, the strength of your convictions. I need you.”

“You have me.”

It was not the moment they were lifted from, he said, but rather several that had preceded it. It was his sudden, unexpected appointment. It was the man he was replacing in this role. It was the man whom he had been with when a majority of their teammates had come to this decision without weighing their consideration or waiting for their consent. It was Captain Simcoe.

For Edmund, Anna sometimes worried, it always was.

 

* * *

 

Edmund had had surprisingly little to say on this or any other matter concerning his whereabouts the morning prior. He had returned to Whitehall in the late afternoon with no answers to her, Mary, and Aberdeen’s ‘ _Where is Abe?_ ’, ‘ _How is John?_ ’, ‘ _Where have you been all this time?_ ’, ‘ _Why didn’t you call?_ ’ and _‘What is with the Oreo’s?’_

To Anna’s question on whether he had known or not about his new role on the football team, if it had anything to do with why he had left the house in such a hurry, he had offered, _‘You’re all familiar with our shared past or with Abigail’s prose on the subject,’_ perhaps only as supersession for the answers he could not be made to give. _‘Simcoe and myself,’_ he continued _, ‘how to put this? I am afraid there is some truth to that particular assertion if no other. We two simply cannot share authority and we cannot leave our resulting quarrels on the field. At the same time,’_ paused, _‘it is not as though we are in any position for me to refuse the appointment, for there might be something in the files Andre kept that might serve us all in our … our larger battle, as it were.’_

This silenced Anna. Aberdeen asked again about the cookies. Edmund blinked. He looked to Mary as though he sought permission.

‘ _I’m curious as well_ ,’ she spat. Anna, however, could ascertain from Edmund’s posture that words had been exchanged which he was reluctant to repeat. She had reason to doubt that they excluded themselves to team-politics. Anna wished her friend’s caution to prevail against her growing concern.

She had spent the morning alternating between calling and texting Abe, John and those who knew them as the result her husband’s abrupt exit. Mary would take any answers she could get; she would trade the whole game for them. Anna shook her head in warning. Edmund only shrugged.

‘ _Simcoe um, that is, Mrs. Woodhull sent him a quiche yesterday and he … wanted to return the pie-tin,_ ’ he addressed the au pair, slightly perplexed. ‘ _Ah – cultural norms, that is, owing to where he spent the formative years of his youth, dictate that a plate should never be returned empty, but Simcoe has no idea how to prepare anything. Which, I suppose is of little surprise, I don’t believe he had ever so much has been in an American supermarket prior to today’s little outing. He was rather taken by the selection of snack biscuits he found as compared to what is on offer at Tesco and, not knowing what Mrs. Woodhull might prefer, decided to buy up the whole lot. Um, having been wrong on your coffee preferences?_ ’ he squinted at Mary.

‘ _They are something of a delicacy in Europe_ ,’ Anna added, trying to give the women who flanked her context and comfort as allowed. Edmund nodded. She could not tell if he was agreeing or not.

‘ _Okay_ ,’ Aberdeen replied, having apparently lost interest somewhere in the explanation. Turning to her employer, she asked, ‘ _Can I ‘ave some?_ ’

‘ _Hundred. Calorie. Packs_ ,’ Mary said to Edmund in hard tones as she sent Aberdeen upstairs with enough pseudo-nourishment to sustain her throughout her entire undergraduate career. ‘ _He might have known that if he could be bothered to ring me back, read and respond to my texts._ ’

The tension in her tone caused them all to stiffen.

‘ _Mary, forgive me but I must ask that for the moment you desist in your efforts to make contact_ ,’ Edmund responded hurriedly. ‘ _Simcoe - for reasons I simply cannot go into - is unable to answer his phone and while I am quite certain he has more than a lot to say to you, he would rather not do so over text. And I would rather not be used as your go-between,_ ’ he said sharply. Softening, he added, _‘Wait.’_

 _‘Then where is my husband?’_ Mary demanded.

_‘Oh, there I truly have no idea. I did try ringing him before driving back to Setauket -’_

‘ _He never answers. Never. But John did. Before … before John did._ ’ Mary took a breath to collect herself. _‘I don’t understand and now you too would ignore me as I stand before you.’_

_‘Believe me when I tell you that I wish there was more I was at liberty to offer.’_

Anna did not know if her friend meant that John had not called since ‘before reading what Tallmadge’s team had taken of the Dandridge/André research’ or ‘before we had sex.’ Both were horrible conclusions to come to, but where her own heart bleed, Mary’s seemed only to harden.

No. It sought to blame.

‘ _Edmund Hewlett,_ ’ she started, _‘this morning you and my husband left in rush without a word as to your plans save for the fact that they involved my, my – the man who has tried to help me out of every bad situation of my own creation. I have not heard from either of them since and you brush aside my concerns as though – You know it wouldn’t surprise me if Abigail was on to something when she -’_

 _‘What are you hoping I’ll admit?’_ Edmund gaped as Anna made a mental note not to direct anyone else she knew to the stories that were making her best friend famous in literary circles and infamous elsewhere. She swallowed. He spoke. _‘That Abraham Woodhull, with whom I’ve hardly had any contact in the past year in which we have both been sleeping under the same roof, suddenly, and with very little cause, decided to meet up in the night and devise a plan to, what? Kill Simcoe?’_

 _‘With everything else I’ve seen fall apart, with everything I now know about you it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise,”_ Mary countered. _“Where the fuck is my husband, Edmund? What did he do? What did you do or think of doing to the men I love?’_

‘ _Please,_ ’ Anna cautioned, _‘both of you, listen to yourselves!’_

Edmund however, elected to continue to address his latest indicter condescendingly, _‘Should I say that our plan failed as anyone who has ever met my mate could reasonably expect it to, and that now your husband and I – our poorly written allegiance shattered – are attempting to murder one another to keep a ‘secret’ some forty-thousand Amazon readers are in on? I don’t know what the lot of you discussed on Thursday evening, Madame, but I do not appreciate the accusatory tones in which you’ve spoken to me since.’_

_‘You know Anna and I read the same study that you and John did. That Abigail likely saw as well at some point. She may have acted unethically but she wasn’t wrong in her characterization of you, sir. I have every right, every reason for concern. And Edmund? Something I really wish you had taken from the plot – we don’t have curtesy titles in America. We threw out all ties to the aristocracy when you threw up your hands in surrender at Yorktown. And even if we were still a part of the Commonwealth, you would still have no right to speak to me as though you were my better, or speak poorly of my friends, you vain, proud, paranoid piece of -’_

_‘Mary!_ ’ Anna shouted. _‘That is quite enough!’_

 _‘Your friends?’_ he asked. _‘Your friends have no right to make and spread assumptions about me and mine.’_ Edmund buried his brow in his right hand and began to pace, speaking at a slower one than his feet travelled.

_‘John. Ah. He loves, you, Mary. He is dealing with his own shit that has nothing to do with you or any of what you two have been faced with this week. As for Abraham he … he has my sympathies if nothing more. He discovered this morning through a narrative about a damned automobile that one of his best friends is not exactly whom he has been presenting himself as. I trust the source of this information. Aberdeen, forgive me, just doesn’t care enough to lie to any of us. Abraham is probably talking things over with Robert Townsend … who makes conversation difficult on his own merit. Though … I do suppose to Mr Townsend’s credit the reality of his being an FBI operative could explain all but the undue sarcasm. It is understandable that your husband needs to get his head together on this. Haven’t we all been there recently? How do you think I felt when I realised that my own old friend … well. I suspect I needn’t advise you as to the details of that unfortunate episode.’_

It took Mary a moment to respond. When she did, she could only produce a muted, _‘He said he loved me? John?’_

Edmund tried to smile. ‘ _He said you wanted normal.’_

 _‘Yeah,’_ Mary agreed.

 _‘Wait. Just – with Simcoe. Just wait,’_ Edmund advised. _‘You know more about him in the four or five days since you met than most people ever get. Let him retreat to his defences, keep a few secrets to himself for, well, three to five business days is I suppose all he really has. And then give it time for it to feel normal, whatever exactly you mean by that. He has not written you from his narrative. He just has to find his voice again.’_

_‘Why do you get to know these things? Whatever it is you refuse to tell me?’_

_‘Because I know how to sustain a siege.’_

The exchange left Anna again wondering why every conversation around John Graves Simcoe devolved into loose war analogies in less than two minutes, but Mary seemed satisfied enough with the answer to lay down her weapons. To call a ceasefire. To – suddenly Anna herself felt unable to think outside of this widely accepted construct.

She pitied her co-conspirators all the more.

Mary, Anna thought, the angry and once-eager recruit who now wore battle scars manifested in eyes red from filling the silent moments she found for herself with sobs. John, the poet-warrior lost for words after surveying the casualties left by the actions he had been ordered to carry out. And Edmund, her beloved Edmund, the diplomat who had watched the bomb drop despite his better efforts. Who had tasked himself with the debris.

Anna wondered where it left her. Where it left them. Where it left their shared cause.

But Edmund would not elaborate.

He would instead smile to reassure her and the world would make sense the way it had not since the night before.

 

* * *

 

On Friday evening, Edmund had not returned late, nor exactly drunk, but something was different, something she could not reduce to the whiskey and cigarettes she tasted in his too-hard kisses.

He hardly spoke.

He had accepted it, he said finally, after letting her curse and cry and question why he could not bring himself to care about the case study she knew him to have read.

There was solace, he said, in the screams in his psyche that offered some semblance of structure. He had wanted to sob but could not bring himself to in front of Simcoe. His strength was a fallacy and a façade, blessedly one he had long been in practice of putting on for other people.

 _‘I’m not other people,’_ Anna told him.

 _‘I’m not sad. Not … not for myself, at any rate. I’m sad for John – ah, Simcoe and Andre both. Though in all honesty, I am not even surprised. I once believed that science allowed for order,’_ he said without inflection, ‘ _that the laws of the universe must also be reflected in the hearts and minds of man. But you see … there is no order. No justice. I’m not entirely certain when I ceased to believe in these constructs, nor am I sure how I could have ever been fool enough to accept them, to think that others dedicating their lives to study sought the same.’_

 _‘Edmund!’_ she had wept.

‘ _Do you know how most research gets funded, Love? Through the suggestion of military application. Even within the space program, I – I truly believed myself to be different. For man to be different. But we all destroy in pursuit of discovery. And now I find myself tasked by circumstance to ensure that Andre’s study is rendered useless in that regard. That all relies on finding this Benedict Arnold first, though I confess I find myself every bit as lost as he, ah … in a more figurative sense, mind. No. No. That is secondary.’_ He seemed to speak to himself. Anna listen.

 _‘What is of greater importance is moving on from this and making sure that my friends – Simcoe, everyone else on the football team who was used in the research, are able to do the same,’_ Edmund stopped. Met her stare. She could not recognize him in that moment. _‘But I am no good with people,’_ he confessed, continuing, _‘I was never properly socialized at a point where it would have made a difference. And when it comes to Simcoe,_ ’ he paused, shut his eyes lest they reflect the emotion that briefly overcame his voice, _‘I suppose the signs were always there, it just took me too long to take notice.’_

He would not expand.

 _‘John is one of the … nicest people I’ve ever met,’_ Anna thought aloud, _‘paradoxically one of the most difficult to get on with.’_

 _‘My only shot at helping him would be to catch him off guard somehow,’_ Edmund seemed to agree, _‘to stage an ambush. The problem is that I’ll never break his walls by firing upon them.’_

 _‘You might not be able to break them,_ ’ Anna suggested, _‘but I should think they are relatively easy to scale.’_

_‘What do you mean?’_

Anna hardly knew herself.  And Edmund did not seem to know himself at all in that moment. She rose to embrace him where he was sitting on the far corner of their bed. When he moved to return the gesture his restraint and resolve faltered. He grasped her. He cried and cursed in a dialect that she had difficulties with but, in the context of the afternoon he must have had, had little trouble comprehending. He felt himself break.

Anna felt something else entirely. She felt that Edmund’s greatest strength had not yet deserted him despite his disillusionment. He had nearly died, but rather than seek refuge with his demons he had risen to offer those who deserved it least hope of redemption. In the heart Edmund tried to hide, or rather, hide from – Anna found hope. She found the humanity he saw in others, that he inspired in her.

Suddenly, she saw a plan.

Her lover would have to handle this with the tactics that had proven themselves before. He would need to trick his friend into waging open battle in the field where Simcoe was at his best, though it seemed they would both rather run their war as an attacking retreat.

_‘Edmund … I don’t know what you are planning on doing with John, but, pains me though it does to let you in on my own little secret, DeJong’s isn’t the only tavern in the area that shows soccer at the weekend.’_

‘ _You’re right,_ ’ he replied after considering her suggestion. ‘ _By Jove, Anna, you are brilliant._ ’

‘ _I do hope that much was never in question,_ ’ she smiled. She saw a flicker of happiness in his eyes that did not extend to his lips. Anna began to tell him a story from the _Aeneid_ she was certain he knew by heart, all the while plotting and planning small ways to restore his ideal of order.

 

* * *

 

On Saturday evening, in the privacy of their room, Edmund’s sprits seemed raised. When Anna asked how her scheme had gotten off, however, he relented only that Simcoe was too angry at the rest of the association team, at The Dons, and at the world to be truly cross with him. Edmund thanked her again for providing a plausible premise for his plan as he gently kissed and caressed her, tugging lightly at her the over-sized shirt that by then clung with sweat to her curves, suggesting that she take it off so that they might pack it. She looked stunning in it, after all, it would be a shame to leave it behind.

Anna, who had been working all day to put her life back into boxes whilst Edmund was off - apparently trying to put someone else’s life together - knew he spoke to her in earnest. She laughed it off. Flirtingly, he continued to praise her, comparing her to the figures of myth who had since leant their names to constellations. Anna smiled when she recalled all of the times Edmund had tried to point out pictures in the night sky– sketching them poorly when she confessed she was unable to connect the dots, laughing afterwards at his own hand, back then. Back before it had ever dared to touch her.

She had loved him from the beginning, as Abigail had accused.

But Abigail had been wrong, she realized. Beginnings could not exist where time failed to. She and Edmund were eternal.

After they carried the last of her essentials to the car, she took him up on his suggestion of removing her clothing.

‘ _Forgive me, my love_ ,’ he whispered against the back of her neck as he unlatched her bra. ‘ _I meant no offence by way of comparison. How very dare I quote the poets of antiquity, the prophets who have seen God and His angles when I seek to describe you, for they had never seen such beauty as yours and would not have been so pretentious as to even to imagine it. It could well be that despite everything that ever was outside of this embrace, I am the most fortunate man to have ever lived._ ’

He smiled as he lifted her, carrying her the few feet separating them from the bed they would share for one last night. 

‘ _Are you back to believing in humanity?_ ’ she inquired hesitantly between hot, wet kisses that extended from her mouth down to the lips only Edmund’s had known.

_‘Humanity? No, that would be ridiculous. But I believe in myself. My friends. And more than anything else, I believe in you.’_

_‘I believe in us.’_

And for the rest of the night, they were all that existed.

 

* * *

 

But morning had since come with its reminder that the wider world had not forgotten them.

“Can’t play. I’m sore,” Edmund whined as he moved to stretch. “Ah, not … not from Simcoe,” he added quickly with a wink. His various scrapes and bruises suddenly seemed sharper in the shade of the discontent her insistence on sticking to their routine had summoned to his visage. Anna stuck out her tongue teasingly as she gathered her hair back into a messy bun, shaking her head at her lover as she tested the tie’s commitment to its task. “Want me to kiss it and make it better,” Anna purred, trying to bring a smile back to his once-beautiful face.

“Might be worth a try.” 

“When I first saw you,” Anna cooed as she climbed on top of him, pinning his shoulders to a pillow, “I thought you were the devil. Now,” she said slowly, sensually, “I am all but convinced.”

“The – the devil?” Edmund blinked.

“An absurdly handsome import with a smooth, rich accent-”

“Am I a demon or a whiskey in this recollection?” he chuckled, causing her to echo his laughter. Anna consented that she was bad at this part. But, she challenged, so too was he. At least she had never stolen from Ovid in an attempt to sound sexy or worse, scientific. At least, he offered, the two of them could remind one another that life was not as serious as they were both want to make it. When Anna at last collected herself, she continued, “Dark hair, a dark stare and a dark suit … I was instantly infatuated from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“Infatuated or intoxicated?”

“Both I suppose.”

“How terrible for you.”

“It was. Seeing you at the weekend, so mysterious, so reserved so -”

“Awkward and out of place?” he suggested dryly.

“You belong here, Edmund,” Anna answered far too quickly, her voice deeper, harder than she had intended.  

“In hell?” he countered, laughing – his widening lips again making sense out of the senseless wider world, “I do. I am certain I do. Last Sunday, ah, last Sunday, Love, I awoke to far fewer things that could well land me a life sentence, but then,” he stopped, shifted, softened. “I wasn’t next to you, the most brilliant, beautiful woman I’ve ever had the honour of knowing. I’ll take that trade.”

She could still taste herself through his mint mouthwash when their tongues met and time again ceased to matter. “As to the devil thing,” Anna whispered into his ear, “none of that – not the murder, not the insider trading, not the espionage, not the documents you found - nothing that happened outside of ‘us’ has me convinced that I’m about to wed the price of darkness.”

“No?”

 “That tongue of yours on the other hand, so clumsy with words and yet so _very_ conversant with my clit, why I could stay here all morning if you swore you’d bring me to sin.”

“Ah -” Edmund choked as red joined the purples and yellows of the contusions that coloured his cheekbones. He did not have much experience with woman from which to draw, but Anna could control him with a bit encouragement. What he could do, he could do quite well. The more he knew that, it seemed, the more he felt confident to try.

“And here I recall you once telling me that physicists knew little of biological science,” she continued to tease.

“I,” he smiled as he closed his eyes, “I likely did say something to that nature. But this,” he said as he reached down beneath to covers, placing three of his fingers inside her, “is more of an art.”

“And you the master,” Anna said, awkwardly pausing as he continued to titillate while she talked, causing her to take deeper breaths at erratic intervals.

“Ah … I’m really not,” he claimed as though he suspected that most men could compensate in the ways he did. As though they ever lasted any longer as he was presently able, as if afterward they considered doing anything beyond congratulating themselves for expelling their seed with a nap.

Edmund had had a few short relationships with various men and women that involved, as he put it, some small measure of physicality. Anna had had sex with a number of guys, a number, she told him with a wink, which she would not give if asked, but she had never before made love. Or been loved. Or loved as she loved him.

“Oh, I’d beg to differ. You, Edmund Hewlett, fourth of your name, are nearly everything I ever hoped I would find in a man. Certainly the only one who has ever lead me to orgasm.”

“Really?” he blinked. “No, no, that can’t be -”

“But it is.”

And it was.

But both of their phones buzzed at once. Anna reached. “Leave it,” Edmund sighed. “You promised me some solace in form of stimulation.”

“Oh did I now?” Anna smiled. Stopped. The phones chimed again simultaneously. “Eddie, what if it is John?”

It probably wasn’t. She had gotten a few texts from him over the past day but doubted from the content that he was speaking to anyone else.

“Simcoe?” Edmund hissed, practically spat. “Oh, it is defiantly Simcoe. And I, for one, could very well stand to get through one bloody morning with hearing his annoying falsett _coe_. Come back,” he begged as she pulled herself off him in order to address whatever matter he was keen to ignore. “I’m certain it is nothing of an immediate importance.”

“You know … the obstruction of justice in the service of fraud stuff that the two of you do in your spare time? That I can live with. It’s the puns.”

“Because they force you to confess that my tongue is – however occasionally – as well acquainted with the words you accuse me of butchering as it longs to become with your anatomy?”

“I wish this was not the way your arrogance chose to present itself. No, not arrogance,” she paused- “Hubris. Hew-bris. Christ, man,” she laughed “what have you made of me? To think I once relied on wit!”

“What I have made of you? Hopefully,” he grinned, “a happy bride who is not yet satisfied.”

“Edmund,” she paused as she read. As she reminded herself that time was real. “The _match_. Shit. I need to shower. We need to get ready. Fuck.”

“We’re staying here,” Edmund calmly replied.

“What? Edmund, we’ve been through this. I need you and you need to gather yourself together.”

“Anna – I swear to you I’m not, and never was upset. Your plan is working,” he smiled. “We can take the morning off.”

“You promised.”

“I said that you have me. Not that I was going to surrender my last morning with you to go watch Simcoe and Tate beat up on a team at the bottom of the table.”

Anna shook her head, “We’re playing Middle County. That is what all of the fuss is over.”

She saw his dark eyes expound however briefly before he shut them, and, with a slight involuntary shutter shook away or succumbed to what she supposed was the same memory of the 5-1 defeat his team had suffered in the fall that seemed cause the rest of their squad to quiver over WhatsApp.

It was a bad day in which to replace the former manager. It would have been regardless.

“Check the listings? I’m fairly certain were up against Terryville. At home. We can skip. You and I. Anna … I um. We actually talked about this yesterday, briefly. Ah, our esteemed captain and I, that is. A loss or draw will do nothing to affect our ranking, and the only way we will advance in the table is if _both_ Middle County _and_ Suffolk mange to lose their respective games.”

Anna crossed her arms.

“And to the greater point,” Edmund continued briskly, “none of this is truly of any significance because it is not as though we’ve any hope of promotion or threat of relegation in this league whatsoever.”

“That is no reason not to play,” Anna answered. Part of her had been looking forward to the one part of her week that had managed to stay –mostly- to schedule. She needed this. She knew that Edmund did as well. Anna pulled a pair of knickers and a sport bra off her otherwise emptied dresser, and after putting on deodorant and taking a quick bath in sparkling ‘cherry-blossom’ body spray proceeded to dress.

Edmund spoke.

“My fiancée leaving for Albany in the afternoon certainly is.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Fate had only afforded them five nights. The first in each other’s arms, the second in separate boroughs, the third with her friends in their room trying to accomplish with _Gossip Girl_ what he and his had failed to attain with guns across the border, the forth in bouts of silence and sorrow and the fifth intertwined with each other and all of the secrets they were now bound to keep.

Tonight would leave them with the solitude with which they were both long acquainted. It was not fair. But they were forever. They were stronger than circumstance.

He did not ask her to stop or to stay, which she appreciated. Instead, he said, “I love that about you, you know? Your commitment. It is admirable and worthy of aspiration.”

“It is a quality then which we share,” Anna blushed. Edmund, frowned as he turned to check his phone. Anna pulled herself into a pair of lycra leggings, humming _Blue is the Colour_ as she put on the fitting jersey. They had agreed by their third date not to discuss politics or Premiership preferences. At present, it seemed an easier argument if one was to be had. But Edmund seemed not to hear her. He must have been questioning a great many of his own commitments as of late. Regardless of if he was able to see it, Anna knew that he remained moral, principled, giving and good – that he still expected to find these rare qualities in others. The task was reminding him of that.

“Tell them ‘no’ before the ‘official’ vote I’m sure John will insist upon. If you are really worried about acting as team manager.”

“We discussed it. Yesterday. He won’t. And it wouldn’t make a difference. It is not exactly a highly sought after post.”

“Will staying home make any difference then?” she challenged.

“I suppose you a right. Anyway – this whole dynamic. Me as acting as manager, he as captain. It is only for a month.”

He did not elaborate and she did not push, certain someone would tell her at the pitch. Edmund forced a grin, which turned genuine when she returned it, throwing him a jersey from one of his drawers to wear to the field.

“Come, we really do need to get ready. My mom is going to meet us there, which,” she laughed, “I realise as I speak is no incentive for you to get your ass up, but she – she used to come to all of my games in high school and when I played JV at university. She likes it. Maybe. She likes screaming at me and my teammates more.”

Edmund nodded, his near-black eyes beaming.

“And I was never exactly _nice_ about her being there, but now,” Anna continued. She realised in his reaction that he did not have the same norms within his own family. At present, his parents had said nothing about his desire to stay in America, to work at Hayden or to marry her. Edmund seemed thrilled at the prospect of being yelled at again by a woman who had already forced him to suffer some measure of abuse. But despite their bad start, her mother wanted to know him. Which was more than Anna could say of Edmund’s own relations. Suddenly she felt as if there was nothing to say at all. “I mean … she is bringing me a box of knock-off heels I have at her place so I can look like a ‘real adult’ when I stand in front of Judge Woodhull’s bench -”

“Where are we going to fit them?” Edmund interrupted. Much of what three cars and a postal truck had transported from her ex’s flat was now stuffed in the trunk and backseat of her old sedan. As it was, they were due for a very uncomfortable ride to the capitol. He seemed distressed at the thought.

“Isn’t one of your masters in engineering?” Anna challenged, noting to herself that it had likely proven less of a task to put that probe he was often on about into Jupiter’s orbit than it would to get ten additional pairs of ‘Jimmy Choos’ from Chinatown into her Honda Accord in its present mess.

“Alright,” he said, getting out from beneath the covers. “I’ll see what I can do.” He bowed with faux chivalry as she tossed the rest of his athletic wear to – and then at – him.

She then watched him as he dressed - slowly, deliberately, as he always did. As much as she loved him bare, there was something almost more intimate about seeing someone who always wore designer suits donning a pair of old sweats.

“Sexy,” Anna winked.

“Shut it,” he smiled. She knew he knew that she meant it when she saw him blush.

“I’m proud of you. You know that right?”

“Proud of me?” Edmund asked. “My dear, whatever for?”

Anna kissed him on the way to the bathroom to brush her teeth, wash her face, and gather the last of her toiletries for her husband-to-be to worry about fitting into her four-door sedan.

They would have forever, she smiled, but they would get things right long before.

 

* * *

 

“Part of me is actually looking forward to my mom yelling at the squad,” Anna said as she emerged, fresh-faced and a bit too eager to take on a decent opponent.

“I doubt it will make much of a difference,” Edmund shrugged. “Terryville is twelfth in the league to our third, which means Ronald _coe_ will see it as an excuse to hold onto the ball too long regardless of what is being shouted at him – from pitch, bench or, as you say, side-lines.”

“You’ve never seen my mom when her side is losing,” Anna replied, ignoring the pun in hope of self-preservation.

“I have,” he countered. “My friends and I have somehow managed to best the DA and every other individual usually referred to acronymically all throughout the week. But I’ll not see it today. The only chance our opponents will have at scoring is if Rogers gets bored and steps out of the box. She has invited me over, by the way –dinner sometime this week,” he lifted up his mobile as evidence. “She has been rather … pleasant. Um. Almost.”

“She loves you,” Anna said as she scrolled. Edmund had written her to ask how many show boxes she planned to bring, advise her as to their travel plans and ask how she was. Her mother had asked Edmund if he was drunk or dyslexic by his fourth typo, but beyond commenting on his grammar and spelling had been cordial, and not just by her standards. Anna did not want to admit to herself how much it warmed her heart to read this short exchange, for she felt she might well tear up at how surprisingly supportive her mother had been of her choices as of late, and waterproof mascara was a blatant lie. Anna did not want to admit how awfully she had longed for the woman’s approval. “Trust me; if she didn’t adore you she would leave no room for question.”

“See? Sorted. The shoes shouldn’t be too much trouble either,” Edmund said.

“We are still playing Middle County in an hour. Mom will probably flip -” 

“Relax. We’re not.”

“ _They changed the schedule._ ” Anna stressed, pulling the browser up on his phone. It was not that she wanted to give her husband-to-be an added grievance, rather that she wanted to prepare him for a battle that would show them no higher ground. Middle County was at the top of the table. They would likely finish there.

Bye-Week had just lost their only striker.

“They can’t possibly,” Edmund brushed off her concern, “I checked the by-laws. It is far too late for that.”

“Did you think to check the posted schedule?” Anna demanded, opening the website on his mobile device.

“Oh … when, when did that …” Edmund mumbled. “Give me a moment, I -”

He took his phone back from her, called the organizers as he - to Anna’s wonder – readied himself in the bathroom,  fixing his hair, ridding his face of stubble, and putting in his contact lenses one-handed with a certain elegant ease as he stumbled through a basic telephone conversation. He reported a few minutes fancier that two games had been switched because a field had flooded in last night’s storm. As he said this, he suggested a few positional changes that they could use to make up for their present attacking deficiencies, looking to her for her opinion.

She loved the value he placed in her words, but could only offer, “You’ll make a good manager, Edmund,” to this particular situation. She could already hear the petty arguments that would ensue in the gent’s locker room regardless of what was or was not done.

“Better than John Andre,” he sighed, “at any rate. At least there is that.”

Perhaps it was apprehension about the match or the doubts thoughts of her mother always brought fourth. Perhaps it was that for all of her efforts to ensure that her friends were all right or would be, Anna had forgotten about her own emotional needs.

Perhaps it was simply that she had always been quick to anger, but when she heard the name John André she felt her hand squeeze itself into a fist.

“You should have let Simcoe kill him,” she told Edmund, “Friday. When you found out what he had done, what he seems to be in the process of doing and Simcoe was enraged right proper. You should have just let him do what we all know he does best and concerned yourself with the cover up.”

In the moment, she meant what and he could tell. Edmund shook his head. Anna just shook.

She looked at him, at all the scars he had acquired over the past few days, at those she’d yet to ask about and those she couldn’t see. Thanks to André and his misplaced priorities, she nearly lost him before she knew him. And what a loss it would have been.

Time itself, Anna realized, was not a trick thought it certainly enjoyed playing them on her. Anna had spent nearly three years gazing at Edmund from across her bar, at times with interest – sexual and otherwise. She wondered now why they barely spoke before the cruel twists of fate that André had engineered had given them cause.

“Do you think it would have made a difference, if we had gotten to know each other before …” Before what? Anna asked herself. She and Edmund were eternal but they had been strangers to a point, what difference could it have made it that point was shifted on whatever sort of graph her finance might otherwise use to create order out of the acts of existence?

He was still here. He was here and he was hers.

She still had to know.

“In which manner?” he asked.

“Do you think I could have stopped you, stopped -”

Edmund frowned as he crossed the room, clasping both of her hands together in his.

“Oh, Anna. Now, now. We – ah, the team, really everyone it seems that Andre has come in contact with as of late - we may well have fallen, but we will rise, together. Hear me. Your plan will work and we will rise. The only thing we need to ensure to assure that eventuality is that we all keep our heads level. He won’t win. They won’t win, whomever ‘they’ entail. For it seems I already have,” he spoke as his lips grazed her own. “In two weeks, I’ll have the honour of calling you my wife. And if everything I’ve been though, everything I’ve survived lead to that end. I, I might well be a better man for it.” Anna nodded, feeling her eyes flood.  

His heart had not assumed in hardship the doubt and disillusionment he expressed.

He was here. He was hers. And he was right.

They could all rise to task. Black and base as she knew herself to be at times, Anna believed him when with wide eyes when he spoke of the strength of the human spirit. When he spoke of love.

“It is your plan too, Edmund,” she said. “And I’ll have the honour of calling you my husband. I love you. I love you so much. Sometimes I think I always have.”

“Ah, Anna. It’s mutual,” Edmund wiped her cheek and after a moment, smiled cheekily as he stated, “I do fear that we will need to find another magistrate to initiate our ceremony, however.”

Anna wondered how her fiancé had ever come to the conclusion that he lacked anything by means of socialization as she realized that he, without a second of judgement, was able to offer her comfort and calm. He allowed her her anger and acknowledged its validity without feeding it. It was the sort of acceptance she was unable to extend to herself; Anna would often spend weeks fretting over a misdirected outburst, letting worry find her in moments that might otherwise have been serene, demanding to know how she could have lost her temper with such little forewarning. How she dared. There was a hypocrisy to it, and Anna hated that although she told her friends they needn’t ever apologise for allowing a bit honesty to escape their constructed façades, she never felt as though the same standard applied to her. Perhaps it was her proximity to prominence in which she had been raised, perhaps, she thought as she gazed at Edmund, that was what allowed him to so easily accept the full range of who she was – what she wished she was not as well as what she tried to project.

He smiled and her tears turned to laughter. He smiled and the world made sense.

“I’m sure in Albany that will be no great issue, finding a magistrate, that is,” Anna replied, having let a few minutes lapse to gather herself. It had been a long, difficult week on both of them. Edmund likely needed to hold her just as badly as she needed to be held, to be the hero who let her embrace the spectrum of her own humanity. “Thank you for standing up for me last night, by the way,” she added, unable to find the words for all she wished to say.

Edmund shook his head a bit, looking upon her with complete adoration. Anna realized that he did not merely accept her flaws, but rather he loved her fury and frustration. He loved her for all that she was, all that she may ever be. He looked at her and saw no reason for shame.

He defended her. He let her be strong in her own right.

Judge Richard Woodhull had made a few choice remarks when he saw the couple repacking Tuesday’s boxes into the back of her car. After Edmund told him in no uncertain terms that he was never to speak to his wife in such a tone, Anna casually remarked that she was headed up to the court of appeals to litigate a class action. It was the nearest she had ever come to causing death.

And Edmund was proud of her.

“You did a well enough job on your own,” he said.

“Because I had you beside me.” 

Smiling, she shook her head, ending the resolve of a few loose stands of hair to remain in position. He blew a wisp that had fallen into her face away, lips puckered in such a way as to suggest a distant kiss. Anna pulled him tighter and spoke a secret over his shoulder, “I never wanted to be a lawyer exactly, but I am _so_ looking forward to arguing in front of his bench,” she confessed. “With Scalia’s seat vacant and Woodhull believing that this could prove his second chance at a congressional hearing, he will have to appear objective. And it will kill him. And I will smile as I watch.”

“As you win,” Edmund corrected “I - I wish I could be there.”

“Then put in for leave on Monday.”

“So soon? I’m only just starting the job.”

“Six weeks of argument, it is what Jordan told me to expect. Your HR department should be understanding if you give them enough notice.”

“Akinbode means to actually litigate for six weeks? Really going for that promotion, huh?”

“You two still haven’t spoken?” Anna swallowed. She wondered briefly how much of the break-up he would bring into work with him. Jordan had not mentioned Abigail once since last she saw him in person at John’s flat a few evenings before. He had not mentioned Edmund, Charles, or any of the multiple Johns who had attempted to cheer him up afterward, either. Caleb had not heard from him. And he barely talked to her. He did not just break up with Abigail. He broke up with everyone.

“There isn’t much to say,” Edmund shrugged. It had been a long week.

Anna still had no idea what had been said between the half of the team that had driven out to Jersey to cause her college buddy to slam the door on them as well. She hoped they were not all in some sort of dispute. Given what she assumed had been André’s latest write up, it was conceivable.

If they had been playing Terryville as planned, there probably would have been time to discuss it before – and during – today’s match. If they were still guaranteed the easy victory, Anna thought, there might have been more that she could have done to help her teammates and her cause.

She could still help Jordan, she told herself. She could still do that.

“Well, things will be different by the time Jordan and I get back to Setauket,” Anna said, hoping to assure them both. “Until then you’ll keep an eye on my team, won’t you?”

“As of around one o’clock yesterday they became my team in a semi-official sense. I have little choice,” Edmund answered. “If you’re asking if I will still play without you here to kick my arse-”

“No. That I can do over Skype,” Anna smiled. “I mean my kids. My youth team.”

Edmund took a step back, grimacing.

“That’s … ah, Anna. I know it futile to continue to argue against one trained in the craft, but honestly, Love, I see this as only another opportunity for disaster. Why won’t you just appoint me coach?”

He had a valid point. Anna too had some reservations about leaving a bunch of eleven and twelve year olds to the care of John Graves Simcoe. She would not have had as many if John could be bothered to answer his phone, but as careful as Edmund was to use his as little as possible so not to disrupt the algorithm buying and trading stocks which they had set up, the new coach seemed deaf to all other matters of importance.

“Because, _Honey_ , you don’t even want to manage a group of your closest friends,” she stuck out her tongue. “Anyway, John has some prior experience. He is good with kids -”

“Being one himself,” Edmund scoffed. Anna sighed.

“More importantly,” she said, “it will give him an excuse to hang out around the crime scene without harming Abe or Mary Woodhull. Plus, Pip’s father works for the FBI, Thea’s for the NYPD, so if either of them ever get pulled from a game or practice without notice we will know if the police have anything to actually give us concern … without having to trick my mother again. There is no way we’d be able to pull off Friday twice,” she paused. “If I put you in charge, both kids stop playing altogether given the current state of the investigation. It is not you they are ultimately after and not you we need to have a way of tracking police interest in. Plus, it might be good for John, you know?” she cringed slightly, “Something to take his mind off, well – everything.”

Edmund quietly considered her assertion, brows knitted as his lips tucked themselves into one another. After a moment of tension, face relaxed, he nodded his agreement and adoration. “You are brilliant. Anna, you’re absolutely brilliant. I -”

“I’ve been thinking on it though, there is another way we can use this arrangement. My kids need new uniforms, and we obviously need to find Arnold before anyone else does. You and John and Mary can organize a fundraiser, something door to door.” According to the maths the stock broker had worked out with the physicist, the latter of whom had in turn taken great pains to explain to her after all tears had been shed on Friday night, their victim must still be in Setauket. By the time that Mary and John said the accident had actually taken place, state and local police had already set up checkpoints near most highway ramps. Someone, it therefore stood to reason, was hiding Arnold in this backwater, someone with as much if not more to lose then their lot.

They could negotiate his release, Edmund had claimed. They could speak to Arnold, find out everything they were missing from the study that he would have access too because of the senate committee he chaired, and then use its very existence to blackmail their way into an agreement involving all charges against their friends being dropped. Edmund had told her that he had managed to convince John over whiskey that he meant to kill Arnold upon discovering his hideout - a lie he invented primarily to keep his sometimes-friend from killing their other shared enemy in cold blood, which, Anna still maintained in her heart of hearts, he ought to have condoned. They had gotten good in hiding corpses and misleading police forces, after all.

But Edmund’s vengeance was civil, constructive, even chivalrous. André would be buried, his career ended, regardless if details of his unethical case study were released or not. Of more importance was that no one else would be hurt – be twisted into a modern embodiment of evil in hopes of better fighting its equivalent in foreign lands. The cause itself was just, but for her husband-to-be, it seemed at time to just be about saving one man from himself.

“Abraham expects that I have some hand in this whole messy business,” Edmund said, “He, too, will follow at a distance door-to-door, both of us - all of us. Perhaps it is for the better he believes Mary to be having an affair.”

“She’s not?” Anna asked, perplexed.

“She’s not … sure?” Edmund offered with equal sentiment. “The point is,” he continued, “He’ll confront me. Abraham. If he sees anything I miss, which I am but certain he will, he will call me on it.”

Anna shook her head. If Abe, if the boy she had grown up with and once loved knew what had really happened, he would stop at nothing to aid in her plot. Anna hated that his marriage was such that his wife was afraid to speak to him over what seemed any matter not involving their shared son. Abe deserved better. They both did.

But Mary, for all of her problems, was not being lead on or lied to.

Anna saw nothing good coming from the alibi John and Mary insisted on perpetuating. She saw nothing good in allowing one of her oldest friends to think that the man she was marrying, a man who lived under the same roof as his father, wife and son was so much as capable of considering such an act against the laws of man and God as murder. They would get on, she thought, if they were forced to know each other, Abe and Edmund would get on.

“We should tell him.”

“We can’t. Anna, he is too rash, too volatile, and with what is going on -Mary and Simcoe, ah, it is simply not our business to directly make it his.”

“You asked me a few nights ago what I would do if it were my friends. Abe and I aren’t on the terms we once were, something I am as much to blame for as he is, but I can’t let him get hurt in this. _I can’t._ You of all people must understand.”

“I won’t let anything happen,” Edmund tried to assure her. “Please if you trust me on nothing else, trust me on that.”

“I don’t want to risk that you put yourself into a situation where he could hurt you, either.”

“Right now he is more concerned that his wife is sleeping with my mate and hurt that one of his closest friends kept something from him, which, in truth he had no reason or right to know. He may think me a murderer, but at present, his mind is elsewhere. If I can handle Simcoe, I can handle Abraham. I’ll be fine, darling.”

“But Abe won’t.”

“I’ll make sure that he will.”

“How?” she demanded.

“By doing exactly what I am doing now. By making certain that he stays as far away from Simcoe as I can keep him,” Edmund sighed. “For a month. That is all I need.”

“Can’t you try … try befriending him? Maybe?” she asked, certain they would get along if they took five minutes to get to know one another. Certain that her own life would be simpler if they did. “You really have a lot in common; you just fail to see it. He is smart. Abe is so, so smart. He has lead the same sort of life that you have if you stop to think about it for even a moment -”

“Anna we are never going to get on, he and I. We needn’t, the same as you and Wakefield will never be friends. There is nothing wrong with that.”

“Because Wakefield, rude as he is, doesn’t actively think that I am a killer and I’m not participating in a lie to make him think, among other things, that his wife is having an affair. You see the difference?”

“It is only a month at most, Anna. Then Abe and I can go back to the casual dislike we had before.”

“And you plan on using him in the meantime?”

Edmund did not answer. She would need to change tactic.

“I have an idea,” Anna said after taking a deep breath. “As long as we are in the practice of employing members of this household without their knowledge or consent, we could use more eyes to search without knowing what they are searching for. If we got Aberdeen involved -”

“Anna, she is a child,” Edmund interrupted. So he still knew his morals when they matched his interests, she thought darkly.

“I’m sending the kids I coach door to door with Simcoe to look for traces, Aberdeen is a smart girl, she will be fine. We will start … trying to get public support going for a campaign to monitor police, make them where body cameras, something both my mother and of Aberdeen’s Black Live’s Matter allies want.”

He nodded.

“Abe will be looking for traces that could connect me to Arnold. How will she know what to look for? We can’t tell her. We can’t.”

“You are right. But. If she sees anything at all, she will tell you because she enjoys gossip. Maybe she can convince some of her friends to go with her, maybe Abby will write about it,” Anna expanded aloud. “We can get Mary to use her job to figure out what charitable causes have the best chances at opening doors and she can get some of her interns together and try to raise funds for UNICEF. You and John can use statistics to figure out which tactic works the best on each block. If we come across _anything_ suspect, we will keep hitting the same street with different spies. It is an election year. People are used to this. We can all check each other while Tallmadge fights with Burr to get a single search warrant. And important causes will get attention,” she added. “In the end, everyone wins. Except maybe the police. But I can’t pretend that I don’t think Tallmadge deserves it on some level, given what he did to Sarah Livingston and all.”

Edmund rubbed his temples, searching his mind for recollection. He had not lived in America at the time, Anna remembered, and even if he had, he was not the best with names.

“You are the greatest tactician I have ever known,” he said when it seemed he would arrive at nothing else. “This plan. I’ll see it done.”

“You aren’t half bad yourself. At least,” she chided jocosely, “You are the most manipulative son of a bitch I’ve ever met, anyway, and I grew up around lawyers, judges, and politicians of all stripes.”

“Ah, is that so?”

“In fact it is, Mr. Hewlett.”

“Well, I would argue that you forced me against my will out of bed this morning, and being that I am quite nearly the most stubborn person I know, I would say that we are on par, Mrs. Hewlett.”

“We are fated,” she smiled.

“We are. Ah, Anna – I am going to miss you so very much,” he paused. Looking at his bag, he added, “We all will.”

“Not to overstep -”

“You couldn’t,” Edmund interrupted.

“Okay. As long as I am giving my opinion on everything and everyone, you could easily play Tate in my position and use Appleby as a forward and then I wouldn’t be missed at all.”

Edmund shook his head, telling her that Appleby was solid in the centre, but unless he was playing next to someone as creative as Simcoe he was ineffective. Tate was inconsistent. He wished he knew more Americans to fill the offensive roster while she and Akinbode were off in Albany.

“It could be easy,” Anna said, “You could try, I don’t know, just try being nice to Abe for a change. He is fast if nothing else.”

“And stick him on a battlefield with Simcoe?” Edmund snorted. “He wouldn’t stand a chance. Bloody hell, the season would end there. John would be benched as a result of his behaviour for several matches at least and we rather need him for as long as we can keep him if we want to finish near if not at the top of the table. Which,” he rolled his eyes, “means nothing, admittedly, as there is nothing to be won with the league -”

“When you put it that way, I really am worried about leaving my youth team in his hands.”

Edmund laughed. “Don’t let my concerns become yours; it is only for a month. How much damage can he do?”

“In a month I don’t know, but in six weeks he’ll have his own Simkid Army,” Anna smiled.

“By next year, we’ll be forwarding a YouTube video entitled ‘John Graves and the Simvisible Children’ to everyone we know.”

“You shouldn’t joke like that. My pun was bad, yours crosses a line.”

“You started it. You gave him the team in the first place.”

“For tactical reasons. Your just making sport of it,” she stuck out her tongue again. This time he grabbed it with his.

“Its football. I have high hopes of it one day receiving official ‘sport’ status in this beautiful country of yours. Maybe it is for the best that you brought on an Englishman to serve in your absence. Simcoe is excited about it, and for what it is worth, I don’t think it the worst idea. Tactical advantage aside, it serves as incentive for him keep in line. For a month.”

“Six weeks,” Anna frowned. If five days had seemed an aeon, what would a month and a half feel like? He would visit, of course, whenever he could, and they would Skype every evening. But time was real and time was illusionary and time was often cruel. Anna wished she had given into her demons. That she had spent the morning with Edmund’s expert lips between her thighs, hiding from the time she loathed to see passed. But he needed normal as much as any of their other allies in this fight. And they were eternal. Time would pass and she would return and Anna planned to make the most of the meantime. “It will be six weeks at least,” she reminded him, wondering how long he thought a ‘month’ to be. “I know; I hate it too. Jordan plans on dragging this out as long as he can before we negotiate a settlement, and Adams is keen to let him – unrelenting as she is.”

“I know, I, ah, I meant with the whole Sim-coach situation you’ve laden these poor children with.”

“Excuse me, Sim-coach? Fuck. You need to stop, because if you don’t then I will start doing it, and I am going to see the bloke in half an hour by which point I am sure I will embarrass myself with something akin to ‘ _Lovey weather, isn’t it? A bit sim-cold but the sun-coe is shinning._ ’”

“I didn’t know you were that in-coe-rrigible.”

“I hate you!” Anna laughed. “Stop!”

“It seems I must,” he said humorously. She raised an eyebrow. “Anna, um. About John. The thing is … he is standing for promotion. Mentioned it earlier in the week but with everything else, we didn’t have a chance to properly discuss it until yesterday at the ‘lesser pub’ you suggested,” Edmund spoke quickly, detached. “He has to fly back to London in April. Already has his ticket. It is ironic. He put in for it back in December, not thinking it possible that he would get a transfer back to the City at all. With his hedge fund preforming as well as it is at the moment and with everyone of any significance trying to transfer things into his management after my brother did so with his unborn son’s trust, Simcoe is all but assured a spot - either there or in Asia,” he paused. “It’s ironic he - he put in for it after I told him that I was leaving, and is now essentially getting it because of the information Aberdeen and I gathered from Lafayette. And now I am staying indefinitely, in part because of everything he did to make sure I survived my ordeal. Life just works out like that, I suppose.”

It explained enough of why John had failed to ring Mary, of Edmund’s attitude upon returning to Whitehall the pervious afternoon, enough of his subtle yet contagious melancholia.

Anna once again felt her supressed rage try to surface, thinking that had John simply given his departure as grounds for his curious behaviour, he could have speared her fiancé the knowledge of his role in Arnold’s disappearance. They could have had more time together.

But she and Edmund would not have gotten to one another half as well from quizzes found in the back of women’s glossies.

For all of the problems they now faced, Anna thought, she would not trade them for the pain of her past doubt.

“He is really leaving?” she asked. “Was he going to say anything? Were you?”

“It would be too risky. If he makes a big show of it, Tallmadge could move to block his passport as he did mine. Anything that happens afterwards almost doesn’t matter – Great Britain won’t deport to countries with capital punishment and he – and my family which he has considerable ties to – are simply too valuable at present to the economy for my government to pursue charges. I told him to go. I can take care of things here.”

“Does he want to stay?”

“I don’t know if he knows himself. He told me that when he thinks of the island, he thinks about a rather hideous medieval mural that takes up most of the dinning area in the palace I once stood to inherit. How a whitewash would be such an improvement, how UNESCO kept us all stagnant. How stuck in time past Europe has become because of foreign tourists. I’ll give him that he is right, it is a rather hideous piece that plays meanly with the general ambiance.”

“What does - what does that even mean?”

“I think he sees his future in America, not because he has any great love of the land or its customs, not because I am here and mean to stay, but because he is always looking for a fight. That is the problem. Part of the problem. That’s is why I told him he has to go, take chances as long as they’re still on offer. He might not get another.”

Edmund continued to speak without inflection, as if their story was already over, as if it belonged to centuries past. Time was a fallacy. Time was a fact. Anna was not certain which half of this duality was more damning.

“You are going to miss him aren’t you?”

“It is for the best,” Edmund answered. “No. I don’t know that. I don’t know if I even _think_ that. It is simply the order of things. He’ll miss me. I think. No matter, after we finished sorting his larger problem, he pestered me until I named him my best man. So that is one last hurrah for us. I am sure he is only doing this because he has something cruel in mind for a stag that will doubtlessly involve a kidnapping-cum-assassination attempt … for the sake of old time if nothing more,” he swallowed. “Yea. I’ll miss the wanker. Around ten percent of the time. The other ninety I’ll be glad to be rid of him.”

“No you won’t.”

“No, I won’t,” he agreed. “But time is linear and life orders itself in a forward direction. There is little to be done for it.”

“Is that what you were doing, the whole time you were gone?”

“No. There was something else we needed to take care of. Something I was right not to trust him to handle on his own. But it is sorted. Either he will tell you today before the match, it will be apparent on its own, or he or I or anyone else for that matter will let you know sometime early next week. It is of a medical nature, you see, and he … well, he kept my secrets.”

“Jesus. Is he going to be okay?”

“I mean that is … relative? To be honest I’m still not quite certain how you seek to define that in terms of Simcoe.”

Anna thought about it. Without arriving on a means of clarifying her question or its intent, she said, “You know, I think. I think you are wrong. I think you have been wrong for many, many years. I think John is so much better off for having had you in his life.”

“I,” Edmund started, unsure of himself or her assessment, “I, ah, I did my best. With everything, I did my best.” He gave a weak smile. Goodbyes, Anna thought, were always more bitter than sweet.

“You had a little ‘broment’, yesterday, didn’t you?” she teased as she turned, grabbing her sport bag and making her way to the door.

“No Anna, that would be ridiculous. We had a ‘coement’.”

“I hate you. The puns! They needs to stop,” she said without weight.

“They will.”

Anna hated the certainty she heard. The only thing, she said, that was assured was the moment they were in. That, and their love, and the fact that they were about lose to Middle County FC.

“I’m sure you are right,” Edmund said.

 

* * *

 

She wasn’t, as time would soon tell.

Bye-Week would win their match three to one. It was everything else that would be lost in ninety minutes plus overtime.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … what a terrible plot twist, huh? Don’t worry, nothing exactly works out according to plan as you, oh dear reader, have well come to expect. Puns will continue to play a role; Hewlett and Simcoe are by no means the only ones who substitute them for wit.
> 
> So where is Simcoe? Where is André? What happened to Abe? And for that matter, now that we’ve brought the narrative through Saturday night, how oh how did Caleb’s fake-date with Ben go?
> 
> Oh, have I a lot to tell you. And I am really looking forward to it.
> 
> But first, it seems I am off again, this time to Poland. And upon return my diary looks full for the rest of the summer. But when I come back – if you can believe it – there is another (two year!) fic anniversary for another writer brilliant beyond compare that we will celebrate with a scene* she encouraged me to write. No spoilers. Yes spoilers. It is a rather drawn out, disturbing bit about male masturbation. I have the best internet based friends and I mean that with my whole heart.
> 
> *CalamityBean suggested in a comment on (yet another!) fic I wrote around Simcoe and Hewlett that Simcoe ought really to have his own child army. I can’t remember the exact context but I am thrilled that I finally got to employ it … in a timely fashion, it seems. So thanks!
> 
> And thanks to everyone who takes the time to comment - it really makes my day and sometimes serves my inspiration. 
> 
> Anyway, as always thank you so much for reading and I hope the last days of your summer are wonderful and well-spent.
> 
> XOXO- Tav
> 
> Up Next: Abe has an eventful morning, Ben *seriously* should have thought more of this through, Simcoe has some weirdly sexual pre-game rituals, André stuck around a bit too long - but at what point am I going to decide that I’ve reached a good cut off? The real cliff-hanger, I know. Cheers.


	28. The Mess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John André faces the consequences of his actions, Robert Rogers attempts to profit from the same chaos, and Philomena Cheer helps bring about her husband’s ruin by attempting to avert it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tuesday I said, and Tuesday I had _every_ intention of, but it is past midnight in Koblenz and I am way past tired. I will come back and do the whole notes thing tomorrow night, but for now –  
>  There are probably trigger warnings for this chapter. I know what I am about, you probably do as well, and here you’ll find nothing worse than that you have already been exposed to in this tome. 
> 
> Happy reading!

In the small hours of Monday on the seventh of March, Robert Rogers seemed as though he had again spent the night in the company of Samuel Tallmadge, who, ten years prior, had been transubstantiated by a roadside accident into a bottle of single malt. John André longed for the Scot’s long-time drinking buddy, for the liquid that seemed set on his manifestation. Liquor had a habit of always being preferable to those present, regardless of whose memory it may conjure.

Plastered, André had seen Peggy in its daze. He had seen a future with her. He had seen the girl his wife had once been and had felt like the boy he faintly remembered himself as once being. But now he had been dry for nearly a day and his hopes were fittingly parched.

André shook though he sweat, his head pounding with the pollutants that wine would otherwise have prevented. He envied Rogers who could continue to rely on an ability to moderate his substance abuse. He envied the illicit that helped him laugh through the lies he told. Presently, the Scot was in the process of explaining to Philomena with something resembling pride that he needed to keep his truck in at hers for a few weeks, providing the excuse that the tags were expired and, in its current condition, it would fail to pass state inspection. He pointed, smiling at a sticker André assumed he had stolen from one of his tenants. His wife nodded a bit unsure, too tense to be tired at an hour that would otherwise inspire exhaustion. She asked Rogers through a forced yawn why he could not keep it in his own garage, given that he had a lift and the sort of tools that might prove useful to his predicament. Robert responded that he lacked the parts, turned to André and added that he did not have the _spare cash_ to fund the expenditure nor the necessary workspace given that Hewlett had ruined the transmission of his imported Jaguar. But one problem solved another, he said, slapping the back of his pick-up hard enough that he had to shake the sting from his hand. When he finished gouging his compatriot for the repairs he had begged him to make, he would be able to afford to fix up his own vehicle to Uncle Sam’s liking.

André guessed it would take Rogers the length of the Arnold Investigation to work on Hewlett’s car, if in fact it was parked in his garage as he claimed. Robert seemed rather satisfied with the story he had concocted, which, André reasoned, he had every right to be. His wife knew little about automobiles, and even he did not understand enough about their inner workings to question the details Rogers provided about Hewlett’s. The white work truck that had killed a boy a decade before would stay out of sight of the Special Crimes team his younger brother now lead so long as DI Ben Tallmadge continued to limit the scope of his search to Setauket.

John André did not mention that he was a target of the same investigation. He did not say anything. It was their turn to lose.

It served them right.

Philomena had embraced Rogers as though she had been expecting him when he had shown up a half hour before. It was too affectionate for his liking. It was an act. With Mena, he thought, it was always (and had always been) nothing but a bloody act.

André like to imagine at times that the affection in which they had once held each other had been in earnest - at least on his end - but in the new light of the past few nights, he hoped this was a lie he had half-convinced himself of to serve his conscious. She had not removed her stage make-up before returning to ‘her’ penthouse that had once been ‘his’, that had once been ‘theirs’ until it had become the set on which they entertained their whims in the form of varied lovers. André could not recall the names of any of his own casual liaisons, though those of his wife had engaged in over the course of their marriage had been scrawled by her screams into the folds of his absent mind. He imagined her screaming Rogers’ given name, he imagined the Scot the reason she continued to wear the face of the twenty-something she played on Broadway hours after the final curtain-fall. Even in the dim light of the park house, André could see the otherwise fine lines of her face magnified by the powder that had settled into them after four hours of singing about the traditions of religious minorities in Imperial Russia. Up close, she still looked forty. She still looked spent. Yet he was still in love with who he had assumed she was when back when she had looked more like Peggy Shippen.

No.

He had been in love with the character she had created for immigration officials and chosen to play for him on occasion.

But Peggy? Peggy was real. By comparison, even his text-based affair with Arnold had been.

Philomena twisted a strand of her bleach-blonde hair between two fingers, laughing as Rogers recalled something of little significance. He smiled back as though he really expected to exchange STIs with her when he finished loading the luggage in the boot of her Lincoln. It was this face, André thought. The one he had spent a decade trying to put to paper and an evening trying to capture in his new lover. It was the look Peggy had offered him without attaching malice, the one given she had given to convey affection rather than conceal scorn. He had not seen it on Philomena in years. But then, maybe, that was only because he had been standing too close, waiting in the wings while she took centre stage.

She had come home on Saturday night after playing Tzeitel for the sixth time that week to find that the sketch of her younger self, which had kept in the bedroom closet for a decade, was now framed and finished with the more refined features of the former governor’s daughter. By the time John had returned with Peggy from the underground concert they had been forced by propriety to leave before the opening act, it had found its way into the porcelain bathtub along with much of his clothing, the entire contents of his liquor cabinet and a lit match.

Philomena Cheer evidently preformed even when she had no audience. She preformed even when she could expect no applause. Peggy had been moved to tears by her ‘jilted woman’ act and ran at the word ‘married _’_ which his wife used as though it held any meaning when applied to them. André had tried to follow the Philadelphian out into the street but had forgotten how quick tourist were at hailing cabs. As a New Yorker with an Über App, he himself was shamefully out of practice. Alone, he had not wanted to risk following her back to her hotel, to Abigail’s rented townhouse, to Whitehall, to the airport.

And so he waited. He waited in ashes of the life he had fought for with the literal form they took. He waited for the police to take him in his own fortress rather than risk exposing Peggy wherever it was that she sought solitude.

 _What would you have told her?_ Philomena questioned later, when Saturday night had transformed into Sunday morning though the streets remained black and bare, the world completely still - save for the hands on his watch that remained in rotation. _That you married me for a Green Card? That you refuse to grant me a divorce?_

She had made her point.

He signed the papers.

Still, she did not smile and neither did he.

 _I love her_ , he said.

 _You met her six days ago,_ she insisted _. You love the version of her you created for a catfishing scheme you began to engage in … around the same time you decided to kill one of your patients. Was that to convince the government to keep funding your research should pharma pull? Oh, but it isn’t your research anymore, now is it, John André? John André_ , she had repeated, trying to sound ironic though she lacked the intellect for such a fete, _in love._

He did not reply. There was nothing to say. ‘Love’ held no meaning for Philomena, no more, he reasoned, than ‘marriage’ did. He wondered if he was to blame. He would be happy, he thought, if he were about to divorce himself not only from this woman, but from the ideals he would always associate with the way she once looked at him. He did not love Peggy. He loved the memory of a character Philomena used to play. He loved his wife.

He hated the moments that existed only to remind him of that.

John André looked at the no-fault divorce agreement, at his signature and Philomena’s, at the other names printed on the thirty page document. Anna Strong was listed as her lawyer, a man whose number he had long had but had never dialled as his. There was some irony to it, he thought. Anna had probably copied her own papers, changing dates and names as a means of thanking Philomena for hosting an ‘INS-gagement’ party for Edmund and herself. He wondered if either woman had any feeling about this, if either had any feeling at all. He wondered how long the young couple would be able to pretend that they loved each other and what exactly it was that they pretended existed in one another that allowed such an illusion to manifest.

André wished he could name what it was about the woman he had come to loathe that reminded him of the wife he had once loved. He wondered if it was better said that both love and hate were fallacies born of human failing – that the only thing true in life was fear.

He studied his signature in the documents he held, wondering at how hard it had been to affix. He thought of the ease in which he had signed countless receipts for prescription refills, of the deals he had made with pharmaceutical representatives that had proven his downfall. He looked at Philomena, or rather, at the woman who wore her aging skin and recalled something a former patient had once told him in relation to one of the many paradoxes of human interaction neither could defeat with reason.

‘ _Pardon -_ love _him? Do I_ love _him? How can you even ask? He is everything to me and I have the feeling that I am far more to him. What he does not understand, and I’ll add - what you don’t seem to, is that if we were together – ah, that is to say, in any sort of romantic understanding - we would be reduced to just that. Together. Of course I love him. Far too much, at that, to risk countering ‘together’ with ‘apart.’ And … among a multitude of realities not entirely of my choosing, he hates me for it. And to be perfectly honest I hate myself, and John, though I confess, I love the mess we keep fining ourselves in._ ’

Months ago, André had not known how to respond. Maybe the fool had been right on some level. Maybe that was all there was to it.

Love was a play that had been poorly cast.

Philomena was meant to be in his centre stage, and perhaps if she had never played the role of his wife he would still be able to love her for who she was rather than hate her for who she was not.

Maybe he was simply too close for the illusion to sustain. Maybe it had for this long only because he had found a number of understudies to preform when she refused him.

Philomena spoke as though Peggy was the reason their curtain was closing.

Peggy, and the women who had come before her, André stated, were the reason he had stayed long past intermission. The reason he could almost believe her when she said _‘I love you’_ now. _‘And I?’_ André had told her in words he had heard in a previous act, _‘I love the mess we keep fining ourselves in.’_

 _‘I don’t,’_ Philomena had answered. This too, he thought, was only an act.  Only this time there would be no encore.

 

* * *

 

“Ye shoods hae come, John,” Rogers said as he opened the passenger side door. André attempted to take a seat but he pushed him back. “Haw dae ye hink I’m gettin' haem?”

“After,” Philomena said. This was the first thing that had made sense since he arrived downtown, though, to be fair to his company, he had no great expectation of logic at four o’clock in the morning from anyone. “I may need your help,” she said briskly, glaring at her husband to get into the back seat. “It is what we agreed to.”

“I am admitting myself voluntarily,” John offered. Philomena started car, letting the engine growl for her. She was probably trying to save her voice for her next performance, that, or it had long since been spent yelling at the man whose legs Rogers was in the process of shortening by forcing his seat back as far as it would go. He watched his friend and former tenant as she attempted to drown out her husband with smooth jazz, but decided almost instantly that the sounds of a tenor saxophone interfered with her ability to put her luxury sedan in reverse and returned the radio to its regular decibel. When she noticed his eyes, she met them with a glare. Regretting that the door to DeJong’s had been barricaded by a police line and that he would not – for related reasons – be able to invite her into to his home for the drink she clearly needed after they had driven John to the rehabilitation facility, he reverted his attention to the back seat and repeated, “Ye shoods hae come.”

“Where, pray tell?” André asked without interest.

“Th’ match yesterday.”

André sighed, putting on airs of exasperation. He left the accusation otherwise unanswered until the song ended where the day’s weather prognosis began before inquiring, “How bad?”

“Three – One, for us,” Rogers answered gruffly. He then grinned slightly, seeing a reflection in the rear-view mirror of John’s brow folding over itself in a fit. He wondered if he had put money on it, if he had accrued another debt by betting against his own side, or if he simply took offence at the idea that the team he had founded had found some measure of success without him.

“I wasn’t needed, clearly,” he said.

“Ah, yer were. Someain ooght tae hae bin thaur tae balance it yer boys.”

“John isn’t exactly good at ‘balancing’ anyone these days,” Philomena chimed in, “And Sim-coe and Hew-lett are-‘nt -”

“They are not my boys,” André interrupted her rhyme. Returning to Rogers, he continued, “You won. Where is the problem?”

At this, Robert Rogers laughed, kneeing the dashboard and hugging his chest as he did. “We didn’t win. Uir esteemed keptin is it fur th’ rest ay th' season, tois ay uir best players quit an' we hae nae hiner ay replacement, havin' lost Woodhull tae injury.”

“Woodhull?” he asked.

“Aye. Ye shoods hae come. If ye was aboots, ye shoods hae come. An’ principle.”

After a moment had passed, André said almost solemnly, “I wouldn’t have been welcome.”

It was a fact Rogers could not have disputed even if it had been within the scope of his interests to try.

“Aye, but 'at isn’t th' point noo is it? Hud ye bin thaur tae play in th' center we coods hae played Strong as a forward, nae hud tae use Simcoe as a false nine an avoided half ay th' problems 'at created. We coods hae finished it wi' a clean sheit, withit anyain gonnae hospital ur jail. But nae. Auld John was thrang.”

“What processed you all to nominate Hewlett to manager?” he snorted in response, assigning blame where Rogers did not see personally see it, at least not for the reasons André seemed to allude to. If he had a problem with the appointment, it was likely that Hewlett had played a prominent role in seeing that the pub (which, he noted to himself, the former doctor no longer had any business frequenting) had closed its doors. Rogers assumed outside of Abe Woodhull’s unhelpful input that the reality of this had more to do with a match than an attempted murder. Edmund Hewlett had, as Rogers inferred from a place of reason, failed to graduate and failed to die, much to the annoyance of his noble family who had sent him across the ocean without a guard, presumably to make the latter the more likely outcome of his experiences abroad. Now the once-heir-presumptive planned to marry a patriot princess, whose pedigree would be far less impressive in the eyes of the British public were Anna working behind a bar rather than as a barrister.

Having grown up within the Hewletts physical spear of political influence, Rogers might have imagined the family had arranged the whole affair from afar – the engagement to the DA’s daughter, the disappearance of the senator and the subsequent new role she was bound to fill in New York society as a direct result of a DeJong’s Tavern shutting its doors for the foreseeable future. The family had a reputation of being remorselessly calculating, but in light of recent events, it seemed a risky bet, even if it was one designed on diversion. André mentioned Simcoe offhand, and Rogers remembered a story the ginger liked to tell about a horse, knowing only the half of it. But the facts remained. Edmund Hewlett was no leader, and ever before tying himself to an American, Catholic, divorcée, there were now enough protections in place from his elder sister’s better efforts to spare Scotland from any real threat of his inheritance. Edmund’s choice of a bride had made his ascendency it all but impossible on its own. Unless.

Unless.

Rogers thought again of the horse Hewlett had shot through its skull and of all of the whispers that were buried along with the beast fifteen years ago, half-wondering who he might begin to blackmail when it seem so many bets were being placed by many with so much more to lose.

John André pulled him back from the scheme he was starting to concoct by again phrasing the question Rogers had not entirely considered.

“Made heem coach? He looks th' best in a suit. Fairly sure 'at is hoo these things ur decided in th' Prem an aw,” he said of the appointment. It was, after all, the excuse that had unanimously been agreed upon, if only in order to save everyone on the team the embarrassment of admitting they were all a little afraid of Simcoe and thought it better to let Hewlett ‘sort him’ (as he long claimed himself capable of) rather than risk confrontation with the captain directly.

“Hospital and jail … You certainly got the leadership you voted for,” André responded, again trying to feign boredom with the world he was leaving behind.

“Hewlett wasn’t th' problem. They changed th' fixtures in th' wee morn hoors an' we played Middle Coonty withit a proper striker.”

“Akinbode was a no-show? Hm. And yet you say ‘my boys’ are the problem,” he murmured.

“Yoo ur th' problem, John. Jordan ended things wi' his burd coz ye apparently slept wi' 'er. Is wa he did nae come.”

“Oh, Abigail too?” Philomena smiled through a series of words that seemed to taste sour on her lips.

“Mena, Ah didne pure techt anythin' wi' 'at,” he tried to apologise.

Philomena Cheer’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel until they turned white and Rogers wondered if he ought to at least offer to drive.

“Were getting a divorce,” she said. She had been seeking one for years. Rogers wondered what, or who, had broken André’s resolve to refuse. He wondered if that was why she had been crying when she had called him, if the two had spent the weekend saying goodbye. If after all of this time, farewell somehow felt too soon. He thought about inviting her back to his place – Arnold or not- for drinks or drugs or some combination of the two that might help her ignore her newfound sorrows. He hoped they would pass because there was nothing he otherwise could do.

“I’ll flin' ye a ceilidh when ye gie it,” he said to André. “Won’t be much ay a party, nae fur ye. Nae fur us. Yoo’ve nae personality when yer sober, John. but 'at is somethin' tae celebrate. A breakup. Apparently th' kids dae it at Walmart these days.”

 “You can throw me a party instead,” Philomena said.

“Aye, Pet.” Rogers reached over to rub her right shoulder when they reached a red light. Philomena purred and pouted her lips, blinking at him with girlish gratitude. He guessed she had received no amount of understanding or apology with André’s acceptance of this turn in his fate. He shifted to face him.

“I didn’t sleep with her,” André said sharply.

“You don’t sleep with anyone, John. You just fuck them. Like you fucked us. And your team. And Dandridge and yourself,” Philomena said sharply, paused, adding almost musically, “And Peggy.”

“If Abigail said as much,” he sighed, burring his eyes in his palms as he continued to answer Rogers’ allegation, “it is only because she is having cold feet about moving in next month with, I might add, good reason. Rather than be honest, she afforded Jordan and enemy in a form other than himself. If anything it was an act of mercy.”

Rogers could stand many aspects of André that others found themselves unable to, but this almost-friendship only extended to the line he drew at hearing the integrity of his boys being insulted behind their backs. André had lost any professional privilege he had once had of providing unwarranted commentary on such matters months ago if Simcoe’s subtle accusations were to be believed; he had lost any personal stake in any of this when he had failed to show at a match against the league’s top ranked club without do reason.

“Oh yer ur foo ay it, ye ur,”Rogers spat. “Didn’t they tak' yer licence?”

“There will be a process,” André replied, failing in his efforts not to sound defensive.

“Ain tens tae testify against ye, ye dobber.”

“Simcoe and Hewlett get in a fight then?”

It was not the fairly standard question but the manner in which he asked. John André seemed desperate for information, if not about the match, than about the team’s leadership. Ordinarily Rogers was not inclined to pay much mind to the warring factions outside of Sunday, but ordinarily he did not find himself in a position to possibly blackmail them both for enough money to retire to Alaska or some other place he romanticised due to the fishing and felling documentary-dramas that a number of his tenants were emotionally invested in. André must know something - personally, professionally, or otherwise. Something enough to send him into hiding the same day the public had lost track of and thus gained interest in Senator Benedict Arnold.

Rogers had begun to consider and calculate ways in which he might press him a day before when Woodhull stumbled through an explanation about how he thought Mrs Woodhull was sleeping with John Graves Simcoe of all people. Evidently, she had said as much to the police on the multiple occasions her whereabouts had been questioned, giving Woodhull what he felt was an excuse to send a man in to spy on the detective inspector. Rogers knew then that he his first step would be eliminating Abe from the equation, and in reflecting on how this might be efficiently accomplished, he recalled the first thing Arnold had said to him when they had met on the side of the same road where he had left the other Tallmadge to die. It was the same line that Woodhull had been repeating in relation to Hewlett; that which Simcoe had likely spent his couch-time talking over with good old John André.

“Well Simcoe did,” he answered the former doctor with a grin. His almost-friend nodded slowly, his eyes widened, attentive. He seemed to know that he was at an auction. They were bidding on the same item but it was for Rogers to set its price.

“Ah mae a’ mentioned offhain tae Woodhull 'at Simcoe was born in Pakistan after th’ fifth or so time he mentioned the place. Huvnae bin keepin' up wi' all th' bark. Did th' missin' senatur hae somethin' tae dae thaur? ‘Terrorits’ tryin' tae kill heem mebbe loch they did tae Simcoe's daddy? Nae matter. Created problems Ah hud nae forseen.”

“Robert, whatever it is that you are playing at you need to stop,” André cautioned in a way that bordered on concern. “ _You need to stop._ ”

He had him. “An’ why is ‘at, John?”

“ _Because my soon-to-be-ex-husband fucked the wrong people over in pursuit of his ego_ ,” Philomena answered for him, her jaw as tightly clenched as her knuckles. “You want to know why John wasn’t at your little soccer game?”

“Aw, Pet. Ah think Ah awreddy dae.”

 

* * *

 

Dr Martha Dandridge was right, Philomena thought, greeted upon entry by a sketch of the woman her husband evidently hoped the girl he was having casual sex with would eventually grow into. She stared at Peggy Shippen’s coquettish smile, wondering at the innocence it attempted to hide. She had met the girl the Tuesday past, voiced her only hours later, and though it now mattered little, she questioned how many small details she might have changed in her performance if she had been afforded the benefit of a longer rehearsal. She studied Peggy and wondered if John had truly done the same. No, she decided. He did not care who she was, he cared about what he wanted her to be – for Arnold, for himself.

Peggy Shippen, Philomena decided, was a child and she could not expect more from her than wilful myopia. She could however hold her husband to a higher account, even if it seemed that neither Dandridge nor that woman’s personal contacts at the Pentagon, nor their foreign and domestic allies, nor John’s little administrative assistant and her insultingly young friend from back home in Pennsylvania ever would.

There was not much she could do to convince the world of all that she as a younger woman had been warned against by Rogers and had been too naïve to accept, but she now found herself uniquely positioned to make sure that Peggy at least would be spared from what Dr Dandridge had diagnosed on Thursday as John’s ‘compulsive desire to destroy.’ There was something repulsive in his arrogance – something she saw in his art as well but could not immediately identify. Philomena bit her lower lip. Only John André possessed the sort of pretentions that allowed him to court the affections of one of the individuals both DI Tallmadge and ADIC Hamilton had interrogated in connection with a disappearance in which he held most –if not all- of the blame. Instead of protecting Peggy by accepting responsibility and thereby clearing her good name, John further incriminated her by boasting about the affair, exaggerating its rationale by bestowing ‘Peggy’ with a physique that she, his wife, had once possessed.

With a calm she rarely found herself in command of, Philomena removed the frame from the wall, allowing it to fall and its glass to shatter. She looked at the shards and thought it better to leave them were they lie. John could further bloody his hands when he returned with his lover from wherever they sought solace.

In the floor-length mirror of the master bath, she hugged her cashmere sweater-dress tighter to her curves, comparing her body to what it once had been. Nothing seemed to have stayed fixed or firm, but rather than feel crushed by the weight of time that had begun to manifest itself on her thighs and midsection, Philomena felt lifted, lightened. She smiled and saw the faint lines beside her lips deepen as her cheeks and eyes began to glow. She was pretty still, but she was also was older, more accomplished and acclaimed than the fictive girl John André continued to recreate for his ego would ever be. Philomena Cheer had won a Tony on her third nomination. She sung to sold-out theatres each and every night yet remained close friends with all of the people back in Setauket who had loved her on the way to stardom and long before. She was kind, open and generous. She was never keen to exclude or allow people discomfort in her presence. As such, Philomena had never once questioned her beauty and she was not about to start.

Someday, she thought, she would not be able to find any physical resemblance between herself and John André’s armature rendition of youth. She saw shame in his pursuit of this ideal, that this was what he considered ‘art’, what he considered ‘essence’ instead of ‘purchase’. The idea that beauty could be seen at all was an illusion that far too many found compelling. Perhaps it was that she had spent twenty years in stage make-up, had worn the faces other women night after night in order to tell their stories; perhaps it was the weight she had gained and lost accordingly to fully embody the various characters she had played. Perhaps it had nothing to do with profession at all. Perhaps it was credit to her parents that she was not prepossessed with standards that could be short-lived at best.

Philomena Cheer was beautiful. She was every bit as beautiful barefaced, without the so-said benefit of cosmetics as she stood before the people who called her André as she had been back when she had gone by her maiden name, Freud. Beauty, she considered, was a character quality rather than a physical state; something she hoped Peggy had been born with enough brains beneath her bouncing blonde curls to understand. She was not the girl in the picture. Neither of them were. If anything, the sketch could only said to be symbolic of John and all of the ideals he would never be able to emulate through fault of his own actions. It was ugly.

Dr Martha Dandridge accused him of craving the ruin he ran from, which seemed to Philomena something that ought to be punished rather than protected with a prescription he would swallow as an excuse. She calmly sorted through his closet, picking out the costly items that had been purchased with her wealth and fame, folded them neatly and placed them into the porcelain tub in the master bath - attached the bedroom they had not shared in years. She took the expensive liquor from the cabinet (as well as the cheap stuff John both preferred to drink and preferred to hide throughout the penthouse) and poured the whole of it onto the pile she had erected. Finally, Philomena found a matchbox in one of the kitchen drawers with a set of numbered birthday candles that had never been opened. She used one of the matches to light the edge of the drawing that had taken John André a decade to finish and dropped the girl - who seemed in her final moments to be as ugly as the man who had dreamt her - atop all of the pretty things her husband pretended constituted a personality.

The empty bottles she saved.

An hour after disassembling the smoke alarm, after opening all of the windows to let in the cool and cleansing air of almost spring, she threw them at André when he came home from nowhere, crying on command and compelling Peggy to do the same. Much to Philomena’s shock, within seconds her sentiment substantialized and she began to sob through the monologue she had written and memorized whilst she waiting on John and Peggy to return with catharsis.

She liberated the Penn State student from the same illusions of love that had once charmed and chained her with the show she staged. An hour after the girl had left; Philomena secured her own deed of manumission, as had been half of her design.

She did not smile.

She did not know why she was sad, if she continued to be convinced by her own portrayal of a tragic figure, or, if she was instead moved by John’s performance.

 _‘I love the mess we keep fining ourselves in,’_ he said when he finally peeled his eyes from the agreement she had paid Anna to write up months before when the barmaid had been working on her own.

 _‘I don’t,’_ she answered. _‘I loved you once, just not enough to justify the way I came to hate myself for it. Never enough for that.’_

He spent the rest of that Sunday silent and sullen; clutching his sides when the cramps came to call for the alcohol his stomach had become accustom to. Looking at him caused her to feel sad and sick. It caused her to question if her soon-to-be-ex had become as much a victim of his study as he had made a select few of his subjects. She cried and he tried to comfort her and this kindness darkened the cloud that hung over their last day.

Dr Martha Dandridge had organized an alternative to Philomena’s idea of rehab, allowing John certain resources to rewrite parts of his original research proposal in ways that worked to serve to needs of Washington at the request of a man of the same name. Seeing the man she had once loved shaking for the poison that had since become his predominant feature, it seemed to Philomena less a chance at redemption than it did an act of revenge. She held him and allowed herself to be held by him for much of the rest of the morning, ceding the Sunday matinee to her understudy. Philomena took the evening performance, unable to spend a moment longer in her husband’s presence, but rushed home as soon as she had gotten out of costume, only to have her face and character criticized after she refused to reduce herself to pretending to be whomever he thought she had been in her mid-twenties. John had wanted to fuck her over his piano, telling her in his advances how much she still looked like Peggy when she wore her hair up. He stunk of sick and cold sweat. She hoped she had done enough to make sure the girl was gone if he should ever be permitted to come back from Martha’s padded prison.

John André was being denied the help he so clearly needed to cleanse himself of sin, but the tyranny of Washington seemed suddenly far too tame. She sent a text to Robert Rogers begging him to come earlier than they had agreed upon. For all the ways she had found herself conflicted throughout their final act, Philomena felt certain it was past time to bring this curtain to a close.

 

* * *

 

Dr Martha Dandridge had not met with him when he had shown up at Columbia on Wednesday morning, fifteen minutes late for their meeting. On Thursday, André took the first train. He waited in the wind and rain for what felt like hours for her to arrive, for her to roll the window down from the back seat of a government issued vehicle, raise her eyebrows as he approached and say with a chilling nonchalance omnipresent in academic circles, “Inspired. I am sure you realize by now that the police are looking to you for questioning. Given your strict adherence to schedule, I’m quite sure Tallmadge would never think to search the places where you are meant to be.”

He had tried to apologise for the day before, citing public transit for his tardiness but she would hear none of it. Martha turned her head, pressing a button below the one she had used to open the window in order to close him out.

John André saw his reflection in the dark tinted glass and in it a boy from a blue-collar, immigrant background, born into a world society subsequently told him at every success and setback of youth that he had a duty to escape.

And he had.

He had made them all ‘so proud’, or so he liked to pretend.

He liked to pretend that his story had ended at the point where others like his all seemed to, when he had gotten his degree, moved to America, married a woman he had believed himself to be in love with, wherever his life might have transcended into myth or local legend.

He liked to pretend that he had served some larger purpose, that he had done his part to feed the loose, liberal, and ever so slightly condescending concept of ‘first generation day-labourers, second generation doctors.’ He like to pretend that social mobility existed in such a way anywhere in the Anglican world, that hard work made it easy, that the honorific that now preceded his name made him part of that which he had been told to want. Part of him still clung to the fantasy that having obtained a norm he had believed existed in youth made him somehow worthwhile, if only when compared with someone less given to fantasy. Someone who still lived in subsidised housing, who, André noted, existed for him only as a hypothetical, much in the same way he hoped he existed to the people back home whom he supposed were ‘so proud.’  

He liked to pretend that the faces he had forgotten still knew him, but only as the narrative he had nearly transformed into his CV:

 _‘John André is a doctor now, a Ph.D. whose research helped to end the War on Terror,’_ adding – as much in threat as in encouragement _‘and if you work very, very hard, you can grow up to be just like him.’_

And both parent and child would believe this to be true.

For the poor, myths always were.

Maybe, André thought, he had been better off back when he needed to believe in such stories, back when he believed them based in fact.

There was a side to success that no one spoke of, perhaps because they did not know, perhaps because they could not imagine it to be true. You never stopped needing to prove yourself. He was English in America until he wasn’t, until ‘ _where is your name from? It doesn’t exactly sound British_ ’ and immediately, ‘ _I read in your canton women still don’t have the right to vote_’ and, with scorn, ‘ _certainly would explain a lot_ ’ as though the place were as real to him as it was to his parents and to readers of human interest pieces in left-wing publications.

Perhaps the flaws he had in his behaviour towards the fairer sex had foreign undertones. Perhaps ‘foreign’ itself was a fallacy. People spoke of ‘common culture’, but no one said and no one knew that their varied ideas of ‘normal’ existed only from without and that privilege carried with it all of the same psychological traumas as poverty.

Once you ‘had arrived’, there was nowhere left.

There were no myths or legends left to comfort or compel.

There was nothing but a pressure to prove that you belonged.

No, he amended. Not that you belonged. That you were _better_. Because that was your duty. Because that was the duty of everyone who had spent what should have been a childhood immersed in study at kitchen tables under the watchful eyes of mothers who would never be as fluent in the language or material. The duty that came with lent books, a vague concept of one’s parents’ sacrifices and a desire to play outside with their schoolmates. He was better than them, his mother said, as all such mothers did. He would work harder and have a better life. He had believed her, because faith always finds purchase with the poor. But thirty years since, John André was still every bit as lonely as he had been back when he had also believed in the idea that ‘better’ was sustainable.

He had become a psychologist wanting to understand the interactions he had lacked and longed for in his youth, that he was told would come easily after he had gotten to the place his parents and everyone they shared a commonality with pretended existed in the interest of their children. André now threw lavish parties for luxurious people but found himself unable to directly partake in the joviality; instead, he phrased questions to his guests that often served to create a collective discomfort. André felt he had exceeded every expectation placed on him but he could not remember the last time he had ever had a real conversation. His research had long since seen an end to that. Now, standing outside his former partner’s office building, he saw in his reflection that it had all been for naught.

Sometimes he felt he would have settled to have more people talk to him as Peggy had, as a person. As though he had nothing to hide and nothing to prove. In New York, he was an outsider among outsiders. He was an immigrant, and on that basis, he would always be isolated to an extent.

John André stared at a face he wished he did not recognise it as his own, for he saw someone who could justify death with a deadline, someone who had come to defend that decision.

He wished he felt more shame.

A man emerged from the driver’s seat to open the door for his passenger, who, after hanging up with whomever she had been talking to on the phone (‘ _Six months is far too long, my love._ ’) thanked her chauffer warmly before making a passing comment at - rather than to - André about ‘southern hospitality’. He extended his umbrella over her head, receiving a small smile for an effort that left him exposed.

“I realise you have had considerable time to think, as have I,” she said as she unlocked the back door to her office, inviting him to enter.

“Martha, please. Allow me to -”

She raised her hand, bending four of her fingers together in slow succession, signally for him to sit in the stool adjacent her cluttered desk. Dandridge hung her Burberry Mac on a rung behind the door; André had already folded his atop his lap. He studied its fibres as he waited for her to break the silence, wondering if he should hang the garment, wondering if he should have offered to hang hers – if this was what was done in Virginia and if coats were even worn down towards the warmer end of the Eastern Seaboard. She sat behind her desk, took a quick inventory of her workload – a red light blinking on an archaic answering service, a computer screen that cast a blue glow over her in the second it took the operating system to start up. She behaved as though he were not there, and perhaps, André thought, he wasn’t.

When she finally spoke, little of the maternal warmth he had come to wrongly associate with her was present in her tone. This was the voice, he realised, that she used in Washington, the one used to testify at congressional hearing and supreme court cases, as chilling as a rain storm in winter. “As I am certain you are aware,” she said, “the chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee who was here to review our research has gone missing, which provides you the opportunity to revaluate your findings before we submit it for review.”

“Our,” André elongated the pronoun. “I thought that my contributions had been dismissed, that I was -”

“Fired? You were,” Dandridge affirmed, adding with a painted smile, “And then one of the subjects in your closed study was arrested in connection with Arnold’s disappearance.”

“Who?” André blinked, though he had an immediate assumption.

“Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to speak with the suspect while he was in NYPD custody. The Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York field office felt that he has a lot to say,” she sighed, “as he often does … to put it delicately – though, despite the fully unnecessary hold up, I did have the opportunity to interrogate Simcoe who later came forward as a character witness.”

André involuntarily twitched at the name. “To clarify,” he squinted, “Simcoe was not the man Tallmadge and his team arrested? Forgive me I, I don’t wish to insinuate anything about the integrity the Detective Inspector brings to his office, nor about your own investment in my findings, but out of anyone on the team, to be perfectly frank, out of anyone I _know_ – John Graves Simcoe is the clear -”

“No,” she insisted. “In light of what the subject told me in relation to Edmund Hewlett, I spent the rest of the day rereading your most recent reports before advising the Pentagon in a professional capacity as I had been asked to. What I told the Secretary of Defence last night and what I am now telling you now, is that it is my opinion that while your thesis was, technically, right all along, you were solving for the wrong variable. I’ve arranged something of an opportunity for you to rework parts of the equation you seek to present – that is, if you should still be willing to do so.”

“I -”

“Before you answer, John, you’ll forgive me; I’ve not yet had the benefit of a proper coffee. It is possible that I phrased that as more of a question than it perhaps truly is. George Washington sees a certain value in this project and is prepared to make concessions to you in order to see its legal implementation. Should you refuse, I fear that – _why, alone as a patriot_ \- I’ll have little choice but to comply with Tallmadge’s demands to view the full extent of your files.”

André swallowed. He knew what card she held and whom it threatened. Robert Rogers, his oldest friend in America, his only friend in the world, had killed the inspector’s older brother in a hit-and-run accident. Though he had never been a patient, as a part of the team he was part of the study. André had taken enough detailed notes after drinking sessions with Robert and the ghost he carried. To allow Tallmadge access to his research would not only damn his career prospects, but would damn his friend and all of the derelicts he referred to with some measure of affection as ‘his boys’. Robert Rogers was a scoundrel, but as bad as he was, he provided a safety net society was not willing to extend.  If the truth were to be uncovered, Robert and all of his boys would suffer the effects of a system that did not want their presence or precipitation.

John André considered the pseudo-moral argument he had come prepared to give. He could justify letting a manic-depressive spiral in order to expedite a situation to better fit with field conditions. He could justify the death of a single individual if he felt it had the potential to prevent thousands more. Hewlett would die early, regardless of what he did or did not do in the scope of his research, in the scope of his practice. He thought of the profound guilt and sadness with which his patient spoke of love. He could justify an act that would afford meaning to a life unlived.

It was not that he was hesitant to comply – not that he would have been had the liberty of his closest confidant not been threatened. Martha Dandridge surely knew this, which surely meant that she had an ulterior motive in making her threat. The longer André sat considering the stakes, the more solidarity he felt with the character witness to whom his partner had spoken.

So he asked.

“When you state that I solved for the wrong variable -”

“Hewlett didn’t die, did he?”

“No, and I fear I may be to blame for that fact as well.”

“The NYPD already searched your practice, John. You’ll lose your medical accreditation. There is nothing I can do, from what I understand a process as already been filed with the AMA. The DA mentioned during hot yoga this morning before we were kicked out that she will personally see charges brought against you for prescribing medication in conflict with federal law. Which … brings me to something I need to ask. Anna Strong-”

“She is um -”

“The daughter of a close personal friend whom you have engaged in immigration fraud. Hewlett admitted as much last night. He also admitted to corporate corruption in an odd rendition of ‘I shot the Sheriff’, on Nancy’s couch with full knowledge that he was being recorded, and though this serves _our_ purposes, what do you suppose _his_ are?” she asked slowly, stressing the pronouns.

“I’m sorry, you have me lost. To begin with, Hewlett can’t really be a murder suspect. It is not him. He would never engage in violent crime. No. Even knowing Simcoe and what constitutes his sense of humour … I can’t imagine what you or anyone I law enforcement was told that would lead you to that conclusion.”

“Pretending you are concerned about the fates of your … friends as you seem to wish me to, Hamilton asked the police chief to assign Ben Tallmadge to the Arnold case. He has a 76% record, which before you ask, is exceptional – most detectives stagger at around 40% of their cases being solved, and in policing, forty is a good place to be. But I digress, that is not why they gave him Arnold to work. No. On the morning he disappeared, Tallmadge got a break in a case that ties our esteemed pharmaceutical colleague Thomas Jefferson to the Oxy epidemic the city has been struggling with for years. Tallmadge lost a partner to that case. His mind is elsewhere. His whole team hates him, and while I am sure that his work will result in a successful recovery – it bides the federal government time to see several of its agendas through legislation -including the implementation of our research- while public support for such measures is accordingly high,” she paused, “without anything looking terribly askance. Hewlett, and I suppose by relation Simcoe, will be fine. They are veterans of this game, and supposing that either has anything to do with the disappearance, there is already a proxy in place.”

“You think _Hewlett_ killed Arnold?”

“If I thought Arnold was dead we would be having a different conversation.”

André nodded. He could not tell her that he had a hand in the disappearance, that Arnold had gone to meet him, or rather, to meet his version of Peggy Shippen. She continued to speak but he found he could not focus. He felt he was looking at a puzzle whose pieces could not be combined to form a picture. André knew it to be by design, that this too was part of Dandridge’s analysis. He had no choice but to comply as much as reason allowed.

Still, he could not focus on what she was saying.

So he asked.

“Let me answer your question with the one I originally phrased,” she offered, raising an eyebrow. “What precisely compelled you to choose Anna Strong for your immigration scheme? It seems to me as though there is not a single other individual in the greater metropolitan area who might prove more of a potential risk.”

“I honestly did not consider Ms. Strong’s parentage in making that suggestion. In truth, it was purely economic, at the time she was living on the couch of my administrative assistant who will be moving to Brooklyn with her boyfriend at month’s end. Anna needed a place to stay -”

“No. No, that is not what I meant by ‘risk’. You see, I asked Simcoe about Anna as well. I think you set Hewlett up with her with the expressed intent of forcing him to hurt his best friend.”

He had set them up to restore the power balance in his own favour, but he was not fool enough to confess to this meaningless act of vanity that had failed in its desired objective.

“I did,” he said.

“Though I have to tell you that I think Simcoe would be profoundly hurt by the idea of Hewlett spending his life with anyone other than himself, it was a clever play. You asked me what I meant with variables – and we already know how ‘x’ is defined, and, perhaps of greater importance,” her eyes lit up, “how he defines himself. Maybe he was in love with Ms. Strong once, maybe it was always a lie to cover another,” she paused, reached into her purse and removed a yellow notepad. “When I asked him about that relationship,” she said slowly as she flipped through the first few pages, “he answered … and I quote _‘Anna? Nothing to tell … We went on a few dates, a couple of months back. Never slept together. I suppose you are going to suggest that I am in love with Hewlett as well?’_ ”

André felt his stomach turn. “It has … it has come up before in our sessions,” he said diplomatically.

“I told him it was corrosive bonding,” Dandridge winked.

“Interesting. I understand why that would be tempting to assume-”

“But you think theirs is among the healthiest adult relationships you’ve seen in private practice? So do I. Under normal circumstance, so do I. I did in the moment what I thought would yield results. As did you. You have just been looking at the graph the wrong way – here.”

She took out a pen, flipped to a blank sheet and began to draw him a visual. This, and the algebraic terms in which she addressed the problem served to unsettle him with envy at the apparent ease by which she had gotten Simcoe to open up.

“We are solving for a function of (x), and this particular ‘x’ is fairly easy to define, at least in psychological terms,” Dr Martha Dandridge stopped writing and started listing on fingers she tapped lighting against her desk. “Orphaned young, watched both of his parents suffer violent deaths – his mother’s at her own hand. He was abandoned at a boarding school that trained him for a military career, only to graduate and find himself unable to enlist because a psycho-symptomatic problem with his hearing prevented him from passing both the med and psych evaluations. I am not surprised he finds himself in fistfights now and again. He is scared of something he struggles to identify and so he lashes out. But what I want to know, is what is the value of ‘y’ when ‘x’ does just that. Because you’re right, Hewlett isn’t given to physical violence under regular circumstances, but fear can turn anything as you state in your hypothesis. I suppose what I am asking is this: what is Hewlett afraid of more than anything else in this world?” Her fingers stopped waltzing and began a war march. “What keeps him up at night, John?”

 

* * *

 

“He killed a horse, shot heem reit up tae fuck,” Robert Rogers said from the passenger seat of Philomena’s Lincoln.

“Hewlett?” she clarified with a small snort.

“Hoo dae ye nae ken thes story, Pet?” he gaped. “Lest time it was brooght up th' laddie chibbed his best mukker ower it. Reit in th' heart.” He clutched his fist dramatically to his chest and clenched his eyes shut dramatically, though he knew true death to look very different. The performance wasted on a woman whose eyes were fixed on the road ahead.

 _“Hewlett?”_ she stressed again, clearly still captivated.

“What Robert is referencing is the incident at DeJong’s in the fall of the past year,” John André said from behind him with practiced boredom. “From what I gather there was a beer pong tournament at which Simcoe gambled and lost Hewlett’s clothing. I understand that they had made it to the final few rounds, and even with the benefit of a proper British upbringing, were both well past plastered by this point - but yes, Simcoe mentioned the horse in question and as a result found himself with a cut he then forced his attacker to cauterize a week or so later. Wakefield does _that_ story far more justice that our dear Robert is doing this one.”

“Guid oan heem,” Rogers exclaimed, “Ah cooldnae gie a shite abit th' knifin'. Woo amoong us hasnae wanted tae stab Simcoe every noo an' again? Th' issue Ah tell ay is th' cuddie an' way he killed it.”

Edmund Hewlett noted the incident as among the most traumatic of his life, which from what Robert Rogers understood of the boy’s life seemed bullocks. Hewlett had, according to Simcoe, gotten himself up in the small hours of the morning and murdered a mare in cold blood. To hear the perpetrator tell it, the animal had been slated for death after it had thrown its rider and she had lost the child she carried in the fall. He had done it a mercy.

There was more to the story, as the tabloids of the time told it, as he told Philomena now. In the early 2000s, the Duke of Argyll was killed during a tour of Afghanistan. The most widely circulated whisper was that this had been done by The Crown to show that the other English prince was in real danger, that royal service tours were not merely photo shoots. More conventionally, it was simply used as an excuse to show the younger price giving an obituary in a British dress uniform as opposed to getting drunk in a Nazi one.

“I remember that,” Philomena said. André sighed. Rogers continued.

In Scotland, the cynicism and speculation shifted where it always did in hard times - to the Hewletts rather than the Windsors.  Word on the street was that the prominent northern nobles had their cousin killed because he had discovered evidence of their human and drug trafficking operation which in that era was considered ‘common knowledge’ rather that ‘baseless rumour’.

Rogers still doubted there was any validity to any of it.

He thought there was a far more credible explanation in the fact that people died in war. While the Duke had not been a proper solider in the sense that a serviceman would have understood it, he had nevertheless managed to secure himself a seat in Valhalla. The tragedy was that he left behind a wife who had discovered her pregnancy only after she had lost the baby to a riding accident while staying with her late husband’s relatives through her sorrows. The tragedy was that there had been countless doctors on hand on account of Edmund’s illness who likely saw the signs that she had been carrying. Who, Rogers insisted, now emphatic, likely had said something to one of the little ladies of the house. Edith, Edna or Ellie –it did not matter which one - had taken indicative to give the young widow an animal likely to buck under the weight of a rider it did not know.

“Eleanor could not have been much older than twelve or thirteen.”

“Dornt matter. They ur aw radge. Bin since birth. E'en ur Edmund is a killer.”

That, both Andrés said, was pure speculation. This, Rogers countered, was not. It had been a perfect murder. Edmund, upon being told the horse wold be put down, shot it before any potential autopsy could be performed, not wanting the beast to suffer a seizure as he had. The duchess, distraught, could then do little to see her lands from being swallowed by her late husband’s next in line.

There was talk, he told the American among them, as there had been since unification in the eighteenth century, of the Hewletts leading a separatist movement - of slowly but surely grabbing all of the land in Scotland until they could motion a succession. Rogers found this unlikely and said as much. They moved on with the times, and as such, were now simply a global business conglomerate that enjoyed the noble privilege of not having to pay taxes on their lands, which, as a result, and had allowed their enterprises to grow exponentially.

Rogers laughed over the opportunity he perceived. Presently, the Hewletts’ corporate finances were in questions of the kind that warranted an audit. From what Abe had relayed to him, one of the children had already gone to jail over it. They let that happen, the family proper, same as they let the newspapers - many of which they owned in all but name - print ever measure of shite to distract from _that_ horse.

“Th’ horse Hewlett,” he clarified, “ur Hewlett is aye talkin' abit.”

John André looked perplexed, and rightly so. Rogers had made much of the story up as he told it – in the style, he suspected, that most conspiracy theories were concocted. Still, Edmund had shot an animal, and at the price of its blood, his family had secured a small county that gave them dominion over the western half of the country (for what little that was worth in a parliamentary system of government that operated in a state that had been under occupation for three hundred or so years.)

What he gave André was an offer.

He had enough to blackmail John’s boys with the missing senator, the intelligence that Woodhull had brought him from the police and the common knowledge that seemed to escape the former doctor entirely - that his lads would do anything to protect each other from any threat that they did not personally pose. It was a pride thing that probably referenced some Greek tragedy or another in nomenclature.

“There are two horses in the stories Simcoe tells when he is buzzed,” André explained. “Don’t get excited, you have hardly uncovered a conspiracy of the kind-”

“I’m nae lookin' fur a lot, John. Business is deid in New York an' I’m gettin' up thaur. Th' Hewletts ur undergoin’ an audit an' a body ay them has awreddy gain tae prison fur 'at fact. If Ah can convince them ay whit Ah ken abit th' cuddie they used as a hitman, they will buy mah silence, hopefully givin' me enaw tae retire tae Alaska.”

“Oh no, are you still watching late-night History Channel?” Philomena laughed.

“Still dreamin' ay findin' th' Northwest Passage, Pet.”

“How do you know this?” André inquired slowly, “About Eugene Hewlett going to prison?”

“Whitehaa was th' site ay a polis search, Woodhull overheard gab ay his guidwife an' Simcoe an' sent his cheil Brewster tae th' inside tae spy an' see whit th' polis gart ay 'at union. Nae result. Sae in a trade fur th' information he provided me, Ah brooght heem tae th' fitba match tae confront th' cheil himself, mentioned 'at he was frae Pakistan - which is a buzzword fur fox bark followers. He is convinced 'at Simcoe - raither than Simcoe’s ain better half- is responsible fur th' disappearance ay th' senatur. Ah don’t caur either way, mind. If Ah can convince them in their hoor ay distress 'at Ah can prove they planned a mudder -”

“Does Edmund Hewlett know about his brother?” André interrupted.

“Nae,” Rogers grinned.

“If you can make sure he finds out and keep me informed of his and Simcoe’s movements while I am away … I have made connections in the past few days who I am sure can make it worth your while –who can have you seeing Russia from your back yard if that is that you truly want.”

“Ah don’t make deals wi' men fa lae their debts unpaid.”

André reached into his back pocket.

With that, Robert Rogers secured himself the two-hundred dollars he had been owed for the past three months. It could have been easy but for the presence of Philomena Cheer, who in that moment began to wail as he had long thought she might.

“Don’t make deals at all! John! _Do you not understand?_ This is why you are being sent where you are. You need to stop. I don’t trust Martha for a minute. They are going to kill you for your involvement in this and I am sick – I am sick of watching you pad your fall with innocence. Robert,” she turned, “I’ll co-sign a loan, I will do what you need to stop you from spying for these people. They have their own. But right now,” she swallowed, “right now I need to pull over and I need for you to drive. Can you do that?”

“Whaur ur we gonnae?” he asked as he stroked her shoulder.

“Bellevue,” André answered flatly. “Psych Ward.”                                                                                                                                    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …well shit. 
> 
> Like I said, I’ll go about the notes tomorrow. Until then, do you have any for me?  
> Cheers - Tav


	29. The Gods of Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tallmadge’s counterpart in Edinburgh discovers that damning evidence was sent from his email as he otherwise rots amongst the ruins of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me preface this chapter by confessing that I am going against the good advice various professionals who hate my prose were kind enough to give – namely, that I’d do better not to divide these 40, 50 page chapters that demand a lot of the readers, and not just in length. I did this before in June, (the Akinbode, Mary + Anna, and Simcoe POV chapters that were originally intended to be read as one) posted within the same week rather than as a single unmanageable chuck – something that to judge from comments (as one tends to) did not work for many of you. So why given the benefit of experience and expert advice would I elect to have another go at it? 
> 
> Well, because after giving the matter far too much thought (as one tends to) I simply decided that a few of the POVs I have been getting ready for you guys should be consumed in single portions. Things are about to start moving rather quickly within the larger narrative and there are certain details of backstory it just seems time to have out of the way. We’re doing it a bit different this go around, namely, the two principle characters do not appear in person … and, neither does anyone else from the canon source. _‘Tav,’_ I hear you say, _‘do you mean to tell us that you’ve posted 7,500-some-odd words of auxiliary figures talking about plot?’_ To which I can only answer: please, when you have skipped this over (which you are more than invited to do!) don’t later communicate to me that you are confused about the frights breaking out between Tallmadge, Hamilton, Layfette and assorted company. They will be back along with Simcoe, Hewlett and the Culpers sometime in the next week or two.
> 
> So who are we meeting this time? No one exactly new. Richard Ferguson made his first appearance in chapter 19, Eleonore and Eugene Hewlett in 18, Ban Tarleton in 17 and Elizabeth Gwillim _alllllllll_ the way back in chapter 7, if I am not mistaken. Fabienne Bouchard and her father have been alluded to in many of Simcoe and Hewlett’s conversations, as have all of the aforementioned others.
> 
> This is something of an interlude. I promise it won’t become an all-too-regular occurrence.
> 
> So! Still with me? Potential warning include but do not limit themselves to: recreational drug use, extortion, human and drug trafficking, broken marriages, life at the poverty line, Cold War politics, press scandals, betrayal and possible police corruption.
> 
> Still (still) with me? Then I hope you enjoy!

Richard Ferguson had a small, overpriced, one bedroom flat in the outskirts of Edinburgh that he shared with an octogenarian actress who had recently begun to service her long-laden talents to play up the dementia with which she had not been diagnosed. He had yet to admit it (and likely never would) but his mother’s theatrics helped with the overall logistics of her care. She had daily visits from the SCIAF, Caritas volunteers to play the role of dutiful child to her aging-mum before an otherwise empty house.

Richard himself was usually at work, and the times he was not, his mind was preoccupied by questions he had not yet found the answers to at the office. From time to time, he would come home to find a brochure from the same charity that he relied on to bring his mother a warm meal lain out besides those that had preceded it like Victorian calling cards on his IKEA coffee table. They advised that the organization would be happy to relieve him of the few artefacts that remained of their estate in the form of still-boxed items he had no reason to display and otherwise had no room to store. Though tempted for a time by the tax-benefit, Richard allowed the offers to collect with his mother’s boxes, with his old case files, with the dust that blanketed what had once been their lives. He told himself he was not nostalgic, but were he to look around his apartment as a detective rather than as its reluctant resident; he would have reach an entirely different conclusion regarding his own past attachments.

Though he did not have a bedroom door behind which to retreat in search of slumber, Richard had a ‘bed’ in the area between the WC and kitchenette; or rather, he would have, had he trusted that the partially rusted metal frame he had found in an alleyway would sustain itself were he to transition it from the upright position that designated it as a ‘couch’. He had an ex-wife, and she had custody of their two sons - neither of whom he had seen in the past six months save for in the frame where smiled at him from a coffee table cluttered with charity brochures and with his mother’s medication. Most of the pictures that hung in his home were cut-outs from the sorts of magazines and tabloids in which his usual suspects often featured. They covered both the opposite wall as well as its boarded up window that he had never bothered to replace after his flat had been broken into a year before, taking a kind of compliment in the thought that some stranger mistook him as having something worth stealing. From where he was presently laying, Scotland’s richest family seemed to smile at him with the sort of familiarity one would anticipate from a row of photographs on a living room wall. No, Richard thought as he tried to adjust the pillow beneath his head in his hundredth attempt to make his makeshift bed fit for rest. The Hewletts did not smile. They laughed. They mocked him openly as he had long been convinced they did amongst themselves. But then, at four o’clock on this particular Sunday morning, he could not blame them. There was nothing in his life that did not seem a joke. His boys were probably echoing in the cackles he could almost hear, but he did not turn back to them to check.

The living area was bathed in the blue glow of his silenced mobile device as it flickered with some sort of notification or another. The bank? he questioned. No. It was Sunday. They would resume reminding him of how much money he did not have on Monday during regular business hours, and by then he would be back in a sixteenth century stronghold with weak reception and forty years’ worth of financial records containing numbers with tens of zeros behind them as opposed to the single digit that defined his status. All of the documents he and his team had to go on bore identical signatures, all of which had infuriatingly been written by different hands. The task would have proven impossible even if justice existed as a possibility. When Richard shut his eyes, he saw numbers without context and his mind tried to organize them in some sort of meaningful way or at least arrange them to the information to which they correlated. It was no use. His phone continued to light up the room in regular intervals, spelling out in Morse Code that Americans had no concept of time zones. Maybe, he thought, Hamilton had changed his mind about Eugene Hewlett and would release him to his custody as he had requested days before. Maybe Eugene’s bother Edmund had finally been arrested and was being held somewhere where his surname afforded him no special favours. Maybe, Richard scowled as he reached for his phone; there were no horses in the United States for the prince and his lackey to hide behind.

Richard swiped his finger across the screen and squinted to adjust his eyes to the two-year old photograph of his sons that he used as his lock screen. They were aged five and seven when the picture had been taken. That had been the last time he had been able to afford to take them on holiday he thought sadly. That had been before circumstance had caused him to frequently fall a few days behind on his child-support payments and had thus lost him the partial custody he had then enjoyed. That had been before his ex-wife had moved in with her current boyfriend, before his children had begun calling another man ‘Dad.’ That had been before his own father had died, before his mother had lost their family estate to her late husband’s debts, before the bank had decided that, as his father’s heir, it fell on him to settle them. That was before he knew the extent of what had been lost in an attempt to short the family who had bound his beloved country by the last of the three words carved into the stone and steal of every structure they owned:

 _Authority_.

He glanced again at the collage on his wall and imagined the shadows his phone created in conjunction with the hour as conspiring to conceal the brilliant grin a criminal-cum-cover girl that haunted him even on nights in which his eyes were shut. It was the same way she had looked at him when he had arrested her for extortion and attempted murder a decade before, the way she had looked at him upon her release mere hours later. There was something disconcerting in counterfeit cheer, in masks that manifested without regard to circumstance. It both mocked him and robbed him of the punch line. He saw her even when he did not, but every actual glimpse served to remind that she saw right through him.

The shadows that had shielded him from this constant affront took shape danced with his delirium. In his mind, he saw his demon in the very ballroom he had commandeered for the course of his current investigation. There, she laughed and smiled simultaneously the way normal human nature might dictate. But the smiles of the Eleonore Hewlett he had long known were mum and her laughter came without mirth. Maybe, Richard considered, she had learnt to substitute that particular sound for the screams she could not otherwise silence. He wondered at his level of fatigue when he realised that this flicker of a fantasy had forced some small measure of sympathy from him. He tilted his phone towards the wall, looked at the faces who shared her sharp features and felt a certain angst he could easily accredit but struggled to name.

Richard shook his head from the tricks shadows liked to play in the dark. He should not have had a cup of coffee while waiting on the bus back to the city. He could not find sleep in his slightly caffeinated state, but strange dreams had set upon him nonetheless and seemed content to pursue him through the night. He returned fire until they faded back into the familiar blackness that bore them, where fantastical notions concerning the amity of old enemies existed and waking fears fled. Barely blinking, he watched and waited and wasted until the only notion that survived to plague him was that he ought not to have sought sustenance at a convenience store after midnight. He already had more than his share of monsters to contend with without those born from chemical dependency. This case was the coffin in which he imagined his career would be laid to rest. Once it had, once Ellie Hewlett and her equally devious relatives had again evaded arrest, he imagined he might sell what he could of his mother’s remaining possessions in order to support the children he never saw. The rest, he thought vaguely, he would give to charity. He knew the number by heart.

When the detective’s eyes returned from nowhere to the screen of his smartphone, his boys’ smiles had been obscured by a list of names and news items that were meant to interest him more than slumber. The overactive Daily Mail app (which he had only downloaded out of a recent interest in its editor, one of the Hewletts’ primary shareholders) told him that a Broadway diva had filed divorce against her husband who for some undisclosed reason was famous in social science circles. Or infamous in New York society. It did not concern him either way. He scrolled and saw to his surprise that the one of the Windsors had said something crass about one of their cousins wanting to wed an American. At this, Richard frowned. It was the first time the Mail had made any allusion to Anna Strong, whom he only knew from a confession and from the Thursday cover of the paper edition of the same news source.

Unnamed and uncited in the caption as being the bride of Britain’s prodigal heir-presumptive, she had been introduced to the public in a picture that now hung on his wall amongst her would-be relations. He would never meet her, and for the duration of his case and long thereafter, she would exist for him only as the woman giving her photographer a bewildered look from the car park in front of the tavern where, according to the Mail’s in-chief (in a rare example of responsible reporting) Senator Benedict Arnold ‘ _had last been seen_ ’ the Tuesday prior. Maybe, had Edmund Hewlett not been the man behind the camera, the paper would have gone with ‘ _was murder’_ as other sensationalist outlets since had. Richard clicked on the link, and found only a blurb under a picture of the Duke of York with his mouth open as though he meant to put food into the space the media sought to fill with words. As he had almost expected, the name Anna Strong was nowhere to be found in relation to Edmund, Andrew, Arnold or otherwise.

At some point in the next week or two, however, DI Richard Ferguson would be forced to stand facing a gallery of reporters to advise the press at large of the related investigation he was conducting into the laundering scheme Edmund Hewlett had confessed to whilst being informally questioned by New York’s District Attorney about the missing senator. Either preceding or coinciding with this announcement, Elizabeth Gwillim would tell world of the semi-literate that the primary suspect in the Arnold Investigation was fake-engaged to the daughter of New York’s top prosecutor. She would name Anna Strong as the woman who worked in the bar which was proving the lynchpin to both cases, in a building now owned by her future brother-in-law, by one of the Hewletts who owned everything. Except -as Gwillim had once insisted to him when pressed- her loyalty. Richard had seen economic upsets become scandals when, as Gwillim put it, she needed sales to make up the value temporarily lost to her in stocks. As one of Britain’s richest women, it seemed unlikely that this alone was what motivated the orphaned heiress turned entrepreneur.

He wondered if her former fiancé still served as her financial advisor, and, if so, if John Graves Simcoe expected a monetary or merely a moral victory if events were to unfold in the way Richard foresaw. He questioned if he considered Simcoe brave or brash, and wondered if he had enough of either of those enviable qualities within himself with which to force a certain closeness to the noble family needed to ensure their demise, as was clear to him that Simcoe had done at least with Edmund. He speculated that the lad had this Anna Strong paying some role in however he had designed his long-overdue revenge for a lifetime of injustice suffered in servitude of _Law, Order,_ and above all _Authority_. He simultaneously questioned how many of Simcoe’s other mates were in on his plot or stood to profit from it; to either cash in the insurance cheque or to simply warm themselves against the flames consuming the ancient house. The family did not seem aware of the fire ready to engulf them, or maybe they were laughing along with its cackles, having collectively forgotten how to scream. Maybe some of them were in on the joke.

Though he did not imagine Elizabeth Gwillim currently slept any better at night than he did, Richard decided to wait until a more Christian hour to ring her to see if she would be willing to disclose this single detail of her finances without a subpoena. It would not make a difference, he thought, beyond satisfying a base curiosity, and even then, it would raise more questions than provide answers. Simcoe managed funds for both Edmund and Eugene, after all. And Effie never offered clear information or explanations, regardless of what was being asked.

‘ _I know what you think of me_ ,’ she had teased and tested when last they spoke in a practiced tone that tasted sweet regardless of the rot her words often carried. The detective inspector had tried to protest his professionalism, having called her in relation to another case. ‘ _I-know-what-you-think-of-me,’_ she seemed to sing over him, _‘because-I-told-you-what-to-think. And you believe it –that I am silly and superficial - only because you think yourself above it all, and ah! It is what I adore about you, Darling. Always have. But before I allow us to stray too far from the point I want very much to impart upon you, did you know I hold a Master’s in English literature?_ ’

He had. He knew she held one in Art History as well. This, he imagined, helped to explain why out of all of the blood-soaked picture books that pretended to be newspapers, hers consistently made itself superlative in the realm of sales. ‘ _My, my – you do your homework. Then perhaps you already know the answer to a question I’d rather intended as rhetoric: Do you happen to know when detective stories became so prevalent? Or, for that matter, would you hazard a guess as to why we Brits just fell so hopelessly in love with them?_ ’

‘ _I confess my ignorance_ ,’ he admitted.

‘ _It is when the public stopped believing in God in large part. The detective came to represent the Deus ex Machina that would otherwise have been lost to the stories society seeks to tell about itself. I always found that fascinating, especially now … you, in light of your current line of inquiry. Just to extrapolate from the Latin, God from the Machine, I think if you take that for a moment in its most literal interpretation, you’ll find your answers obvious._ ’  

She had said this to him a little over a month before, but a day did not pass without him pausing to consider her words. There was a difference, or so she had told him, between her truth, his truth, and that which the public perceived as being true regardless of whether or not there were any facts to support it. Gwillim explained that wherever possible, she tested several versions of the same story online before publishing the one that had attracted the more attention in accordance with an algorithm her ex had programmed during his brief stint at university. Within the year, this was the way all media would openly acknowledge itself as having been generated, but at the time, he had responded, ‘ _That isn’t news._ ’ Gwillim paused for what had seemed to Richard a rather long while, his neck and shoulder craned to support the handset cradled uncomfortably between them.

_‘What makes you think your truth – or rather, the one your superiors expect you to arrive at, is more relevant than that of my readers?’_

_‘I’m not looking for truth, I’m looking for justice,’_ he stammered in reply, shaken by the honesty of a sentiment he had never considered existed within him.

 _‘Tell me, Fergie,’_ Gwillim hummed. _‘Are you a vengeful god?’_

Richard thoughts drifted back the boy he had once arrested and to the war he seemed to secretly be waging against those who had wronged them both. Wronged them all. _No,_ he said to himself in response to memory. _Though I certainly pray to one._ If Gwillim believed there was any validity to the world-view of her readers, she likely did as well. She had due cause. He would call her tomorrow and see if she had any more light to shed on the discrepancies hat seemed so common between truth and honesty, if Simcoe still advised her finances and if they had spoken since either investigation began.

Preoccupied with thoughts of the past, he could not seem to shut his eyes.

Richard stared again at his wall but the shadows were still. Perhaps they had found the slumber that eluded him. John Graves Simcoe was not directly part of his case and therefore not present in his collage. He suddenly found himself struggling to remember what the lad had even looked like. A fellow ginger? Or was that Tarleton he was thinking of? Though the man in form remained cloaked in umbra, Richard could clearly recall his piercing voice, though it was said such was the quality of character most easily dissolved by time’s passing. A birth defect? he wondered briefly. No. Simcoe had sustained some considerable damage to his hearing, but the detective inspector could not recall how. He looked back at his phone and wondered if the then-falsely-accused had any happy memories to retreat to as he returned to the lock screen of his mobile, to his sons building a castle from sand that would never fade or fall into ruin. Not for him. Not like everything else seemed want to.

A list of missed calls obscured the base of the structure. One number he had saved as _‘Tallmadge – NY’_ , the second he had to Google and the third was blocked and untraceable. Probably, Richard thought, a creditor. No. That made no sense, logically or logistically. No one who rang fourteen times a day did so without providing a call back number, even if it was to one of the centres so overrun by other business that he had since learned the various rotations of their hold music selections. He shook his head. He had settled his scheduled payment on time this month. He was being paranoid. Fourteen-hour workdays and two-hour commutes on public transit tended have that effect on the mind.

The listed number, he saw in his internet search, was registered to the British Embassy in Washington. He found it was not one he could dial back and in searching for an alternative, thought it better to wait until Monday, when - thought it would statistically be no more likely that it was at present he would find anyone able to direct his call- the recording that played in constant loop for the calls lost in limbo would direct him to the website as opposed to inform him of business hours. The Embassy was closed on weekends, which caused Richard to think that he was in the wrong branch of service altogether. The fact that Tallmadge had also rung him up from New York City on a Saturday night told him the sentiment may have been international among inspectors, except that Tallmadge’s call had lasted for all of three seconds. Either he had dialled him by mistake, or he realised on the first ring that it had been around two in the morning in Edinburgh when he had tried to reach out. He hoped it was the former. He hoped this particular misery of lying awake in isolation save for the ghosts of inquiry was an individual trait.

He checked his email to be sure. There was nothing from Tallmadge. One of his sergeants, however, had been in touch. _Thank you for your assistance_ , the subject line read. Richard inhaled slowly.

He was initially tempted to take the statement as sarcasm, but his heart filled with dread when he saw that he had afterwards received a missive from someone named Rochambeau. It was the first time - and consequentially the last - the name would appear in his inbox. In light of Yilmaz’s stated gratitude, he rightly presumed this was more likely a French operative wanting to remind him that he had been sworn the secrecy on a matter of state than it was a Nigerian prince wanting to save him from financial freefall. Richard could suddenly taste the sort of metal which science instructed was adrenaline and decades of service put as pistol being pressed against the back of his throat. Once more, Richard found himself wishing that his patriotism took the form of answering phones in a foreign office - Monday through Friday, from nine until four.  

With the hesitation of a man who knew what he was to find, he checked his outgoing mail. An attachment had been sent to DS Yilmaz of the NYPD containing all of the old files from the case that had effectively ended his career. The file contained photographs from all of the physical evidence, plus the notes he had taken but had never shared with his colleagues.

He called his counterpart in New York and found the line was dead.

He next tried the sergeant someone had been in communication with in his name, again arriving at nothing. It was midnight in New York, but owing to paranoia and personal habits, Richard was unable to comprehend that his foreign colleagues might well be asleep.

In a panic, he then rang the mother of his children and begged her to board a plane. Anywhere, he said, but France. Or, in light of recent events, Mali or New York. He wouldn’t see his children again, she told him. This much he had reasoned before he made the call. He asked if he could speak to them. She replied that it was five in the morning, adding in response to his plea to ‘ _at least tell them that Daddy loves them_ ’ that though he may have been her sons’ biological father, he was not their ‘dad’. Once she hung up, Richard spent a goodly time screaming into a couch cushion he had been pretending was a pillow, knowing his ex-wife was right, praying that she knew she was as well and that the words she had just spoken in anger would manifest in her heeding what he well suspected would be his final words of warning. When he had gathered himself together, he buried the picture of his boys in the blackness of a drawer, hoping that they would always be as they had in that moment, smiling together, their arms wrapped around each other’s backs. Hoping that they would grow to be nothing like him.

Richard erased their image from the screen of his phone by pulling up his address book once more. He had seventeen numbers for the same person, a figure which was in itself, he suspected, no accident. He tried the last of these that had called him, inhaling slowly in rhythm with each ring, hoping to create enough calm to prove convincing. The first three times he filled his lungs he felt the serenity he sought – thereafter he found that he was out of breath. The room seemed to contain less air and whilst suffocating in the seconds that passed between sound and dead silence, he considered that Lady Eleonore had been the first to suffer the fate he felt certain awaited everyone who knew why a human smuggler was said to have attempted to ‘steal a horse’ on the night he first made the acquaintance of those who now lined his wall and window. The ringing was replaced by the light static of woken slumber. He heard a faint but identifying ‘ _ah_ ’ from a speaker searching in a darkened room for orientation. Deciding it was an act, his worry turned back into anger before he could register that he had been concerned for the well-being of his age-old enemy. He pulled himself up and felt pain trickle down his spine as his vertebra individually adjusted to their new freedom from the thin futon mattress. Hatred filled him. He felt her in his bones.

 “This is off the record,” Richard said before she could speak her surname. “You have anything on you? I … I can’t sleep,” he admitted, adding sharply, “ _You know why._ ”

>> _Anything on me?_ _Are we referring to diacetylmorphine, Inspector Ferguson?_ << she seemed to laugh. He was certain that she was not smiling. >> _Come – you don’t honestly believe that I’d dirty my hands … or lands. Just as I don’t honestly think given your purse, personality and perceived morals you would risk interacting with an enslaving substance, especially given that I myself fund every public addiction clinic on the island. Or … are you secretly keen on my face? That it? Is that the reason you have my picture on your wall? No, Inspector. That is not the game we are playing._ <<

He had used in the past while undercover; though that distinction would ordinarily imply that his employer had sent him. It would have been more accurate to state that he had spent some of his nights stuck between wanting to forget that he was a cop and wanting to forge a kind of closeness to the one constant in his life who thought him above vice, which was easier to accomplish with a needle stuck into him. Ellie did not know this, or she did without letting it affect her judgement. There was an unrecognized irony in their relationship most exemplified by the fact that she saw the best in him. She spoke as though they shared a ‘common truth’, as her best friend might put it. This, of course, was impossible in every sense. Richard hated himself whenever he rang, and he rang her more often than he rang any of his other personal or professional contacts - sometimes, it seemed, just for the paradoxical comfort of knowing that she was still around. He wondered if she too saw this as a cry for help, if she knew how much she hurt him by answering or if she knew how confounding he found her honesty.

When Ellie Hewlett was sixteen years old, she had learned from a classmate that part of her family’s considerable wealth had been accrued in the lucrative opium trade resulting from the First Anglo-Afghan War. According to her own account, she and a few of her classmates had taken blood-thinners her younger brother had stolen from the elder on the rare weekend they had reason to visit their ancestral home. Ellie had stolen a handgun while in residence she claimed had been used to shot a thoroughbred through its skull and had been in the process of suggesting that the six of them make a game of it when Simcoe spoke up. He fought her for the weapon and in short time she bleed quite a lot on account of the pills she had taken. He dragged her into a water closet and helped her to clean up her face and her act, as it were, by choking her with toilet water and crying her about his mum. He told her that she did not want to die. Not really. Not like this. Ellie argued until she agreed and somewhere in the course of offering an explanation for which she was not asked, Simcoe conceded his sympathies. He shared a sense of suffering at the hands of someone with the same surname. Her elder brother –he of the blood-thinners – had taken him to a ‘safe house’ as a translator and sold him out to a rival faction when they found themselves under fire.

Ellie admitted to having spent a large part of the summer that followed attempting to understand the power structure of this branch of the family business. Somewhere along her search for answers had found herself positioned to execute a coup of sorts. She never elaborated what ‘sorts’ of trouble she had found herself in. ‘ _No trouble!_ ’ she had insisted when this first came up years later, in the same charming tones that chimed like coins won in a dangerous game of chance common to all she had attended boarding school with. ‘ _Johnny made me swear I’d never hinder my intellectual capacities with such a wicked substance. I think he well might kill me if I did,_ ’ she joked without laughing.

‘ _She doesn’t even drink coffee anymore_ ,’ Effie Gwillim later confirmed. ‘ _Honestly, our Ellie is the dullest drug lord I’ve ever in my life known and I’ve my fiancé to thank_.’

He found it incredibly sad that though they were all so quick to claim her, no one else in her life seemed bothered that ‘their Ellie’ squandered all of her talents on creating societal disharmony. He sometimes spoke to her about this, wondering if Simcoe, in whom he had so much faith, had ever attempted to further his intervention. Wondering then if he was bold or brash enough to succeed where his better had often failed. Ellie Hewlett had spent the decade since carving out a monopoly by campaigning against the then widespread practice of prescribing oxycodone and killing off or commandeering any illicit competition. She ran various charities to combat substance abuse, which seemed counterintuitive until one took into account that her family enjoyed tax credits and allowances from a government that could not otherwise save the people it was sworn to serve from the vices, as Ellie put it, ‘ _they would partake in regardless._ ’ At least in the centre, she reasoned, she was able to execute some measure of control. Richard was hesitant to extend the benefit of doubt. His boss once told him that he was the only man in law enforcement who saw the marked decrease in drug cases as a net loss. In truth, when he looked at the ‘drug problem’ in general and his own in specific, he saw only a girl content to damn the world to be the victim of her circumstances. This did not stop him from ringing time and again, even where there were no pressing matters to discuss.

“I just had to ring my ex and tell her to get the kids on a plane,” he told her flatly.

>> _An impromptu holiday? At five o’clock in the morning? I suppose that is how those things usually work out, isn’t it? You’ll forgive me,_ << she yawned, >> _I’ve only just_ - <<

“No. I can’t forgive you, Ellie,” he interrupted. “You put my family in danger. Hell, you put _your_ family in danger -”

>> _Do you think?_ << she asked, it seemed, in earnest.

“How did you do it? How did you come into my home?”

>> _I didn’t,_ << she yawned again, inquiring, >> _Are we still off the record, Love?_ <<

“Sure,” Richard responded. They had done this dance before. Someday she would misstep. Eleonore Hewlett had always been honest in word if not deed, a quality he was open to admit he would have found admirable on some level had it existed in anyone else. Someday, he was confident, she would say the wrong thing at the right time and he would be ready to meet her with force. He, or the French, or Simcoe - assuming he was not exhausting his efforts on the Hewlett whose gun sat on his mantel.

Maybe she already had miscalculated in form of the email she had sent to Sergeant Yilmaz, presumably in an effort to save the same old friend who had inadvertently gifted her with a small empire from suspicion. It was with this thought that Richard first actively realized he considered Simcoe to have been behind the Arnold disappearance. He wondered how many times he had seen the word ‘law’ in combination with ‘order’ and ‘authority’ before it had ceased to have any meaning for him as a cop. He wondered if he would have retired his badge long ago if not for the protection it had afforded him until this morning.

Ellie sighed in a rare crack of composure.

>> _One - or perhaps more - of your Caritas volunteers is fulfilling some community service requirement set by the court for pretty theft as opposed to paying a fine. I’ll confess, I’ve known this one in question for quite some time and I was rather cross at having my expectations betrayed with such blatant disregard. Such a bright girl, otherwise, truly a shame_ ,<< she lamented, >> _I do so hope the other hundred-ninety-nine hours she is required to spend in service to the poor and sick will do something to sort her out, but then my concerns don’t interest you._ <<

“They do when you admit to using a heavy-handed court ruling to the end of extortion and espionage,” Richard countered.

>> _I thought we were off the record? But it is rather curious - having a think on it, I can nearly hear you in my dreams,_ << she continued hurriedly, >> _Knowing how keen you are to tell anyone who will listen what a dreadful person you think me to be_ -<<

“I told no one, Ellie – about any of it. Christ, you played yourself. _Why?_ ”

>> _Well you told your mum, certainly, and I had my insider feed her the same line. ‘_ Ah, Lady Eleonore is such a demon. And such an incompetent one at that! She deserves to be punished for putting that killer into a coma! _’_ _And so on, and so on_ << she said, her octane lowering to a base line. >> _Evidently, Mummy Dearest was quite helpful in getting … DS Yilmaz, is it? the information she was after. Breaking into your email server was logistically easier to work out._ <<

The information DS Yilmaz had not known she was after was Eleonore’s own account of a crime she had committed as a minor in the name of a military commander who had most certainly been in the capacity to clear up the matter on his own had it been brought to his attention.

At the time in question, Ellie’s twin brother Eugene was dating Fabienne Bouchard, the daughter of the man who had recently taken command of the French Foreign Legion, consequently, the first General in the unit’s history to have been promoted through its own ranks. According to propaganda that had since passed into myth, when the current _Le Père Légion_ naturalized and was given a new identity in exchange for his spilt blood, he had elected to stay in the armed forces, declining to offer of a more comfortable command with the regulars. In the time that lapsed between Captain and General, Émile Bouchard lost half of his face to heavy shelling, the love of his life to sickness, and nearly every trace of his former life to a system that fed its ranks on the promise of exoneration.

Before he had been a celebrated solider in command of 7,000 men who had sworn their allegiance directly to him, Bouchard had known, and had been know, by a different name, albeit one that evoked a similarly dangerous connotation.

Jaensch Krawczyk had been born behind the Iron Curtin and had, until the collapse of communism, made a living in the illicit export of his own countrymen. When his niche was nullified by politics in the early nineties, he sought to carve out another in the city he had then found himself, but found heavy competition in another group of Cold War casualties, Afghans who had seen their country stolen by religious fundamentalists the Americans had propped up to assist in their skirmishes with the Soviets. Krawczyk blinked for a moment and had opened his eyes to find that he had been edged out of his old market. He thus joined with a group of formal rivals from Eastern Europe to get in on these new trafficking route, only to sell a number of them out months later before heading to France to wash his hands of sin in the blood of whomever the west decided was democracy’s enemy de jour. He left behind a number of powerful enemies in the form of imprisoned compatriots, one of whom would shot up the Afghani safe house twelve years later while on parole and kidnap the Urdu-speaking ‘cousin’ of a price – who, as it happened, was not nearly as profitable of a hostage as he would have hoped.

But Krawczyk, nicknamed and now officially titled ‘the butcher’ did not concern himself with any of this, not even a year later when his only begotten child began attending the same military boarding school as the boys who had found themselves in so much trouble with the criminal networks he had once sold out. The incident had been of no concern to anyone who had been outside of Glasgow itself that night. That was until The Daily Mail, at the urging of its then-eighteen-year-old owner, had published a series on the General’s daughter once she had left England for university. Fabienne had become something a public interest piece overnight when her boyfriend, a year younger, made a romantic hero of himself by following her back to France before obtaining his A-levels.

The gods of old had a great sense of irony. Because a bill for softer sentencing championed by Eugene Hewlett’s uncle in the House of Peers had become common practice, because Elizabeth Gwillim had aged into her inheritance, and because there was so much to be made from what the junior editor saw as a love story, Fabienne Bouchard found herself on the cover of nearly every print tabloid in Britain by the time her first semester at the Sorbonne had started. Because she so resembled her father, her problems quickly proved themselves to be greater than seeing herself reduced to a subject of gossip across the channel.

By October, she was receiving daily threats from a more dangerous opportunist than her former friend from school. The man who had once gone into business with her father, who had once kidnapped her friend John for ransom and who had twice been released because of a policy proposal from the uncle of the boy who shared her bed, claimed he would surrender the name Jaensch Krawczyk  to any media outlet willing to pay the price he set it if she would not. Fabienne knew from Elizabeth’s stories of shareholder meetings the severity of the threat. She knew from her father’s mouth that there were more wars then men to fight them. She knew from his general disposition towards her boyfriend that he considered leniency foreign states extended towards criminals the reason enlistment had flown from a flood to a trickle. If the commander’s prior convictions were made public, panic would set in across the service men. All of their wars would be lost as a result.

This was what Edmund Hewlett had explained to the Foreign Office after his younger sister collaborated the account John Graves Simcoe gave DI Ferguson under duress. Simcoe told of the attempted blackmail, of finding out that his friend and classmate planned to pay a portion of the proposed fee for her future sister-in-law. The Eleonore Hewlett, meanwhile, said that she had had every intention of creating a situation that would permit her to kill the would-be extortionist in self-defence, but that Simcoe had intervened on her behalf before it had gotten to the point of true physical danger.

There was an irony in that had the information come out any other way, all would have been exonerated without incident. Because they had each individually admitted to possessing information that threatened a military ally, however, their continued safety was tied to their sworn silence over the whole affair, as was Richard’s. There was an irony in that he would have lost his job had this very truth not come out as it did, having subjected the then-legally-underage Ellie to interrogation without appointing an appropriate adult. There was a tragedy in that in inadvertently saving him from being sacked, the information he had come to possess chained him to his post. He would never be promoted.

Now the good people of the NYPD knew that Simcoe had beaten a man quite nearly to his death with his bare hands, and more dangerously, they knew the reason why. Richard wondered if this had been part of Ellie’s aim.

“Simcoe is trying to frame your brother for a crime he likely did not commit,” he tested.

>> _Ah … good luck to him with that,_ << she commented without interest. Richard knotted his brow as she continued briskly, >> _Now, Fergie - you’ll excuse for a moment what you think you cannot forgive – I am about to make a wild assumption about you based on that moral on your back wall. You’re rooting for Simcoe’s success in this what you’ve named as his current venture, aren’t you? While there is nothing I can do from where I am to make that scenario that exists solely in your head any more likely, if you’ll be so kind as to use your … limited influence to help me where I’ve none, I’ll … put a detail on your children if you truly deem it necessary. I don’t. For the record, I truly don’t. But then I’ve had more to do with Père Boucher over the course of the past decade than you have. I wouldn’t give Rochambeau too terribly much of your mind._ <<

He wondered if she had read the email as well, and if so, how she could be so cavalier with regard to its content.

“It is not just me. It is Yilmaz, Tallmadge –neither of whom I can reach – it is everyone they work with. It’s Simcoe.”

>> _Lafayette isn’t reckless. Or maybe he is but I should doubt that he is stupid besides. The most he can do from his current position is redirect the police. Ah … you can help with that as well. In fact, that is why I’m entertaining this discussion,_ << she paused, >> _Does the name Selah Strong say anything to you?_ <<

“Strong does,” Richard answered, looking at the darkness that covered the pictures that covered his wall and window, seeing Anna all the same and sharing in her confusion.

>> _Anna’s ex. A solider or sailor or something,_ << she clarified. >> _He recently moved down to Norfolk. Um. There is a Norfolk in the Americas as well. One of the Carolinas?_ <<

“Virginia,” he corrected.

>> _Christ that is even worse. His new fiancée, Najma Abboud, served a few tours under Benedict Arnold before he was elected to the senate or she was dishonourably discharged for sleeping with a subordinate. Which ever happened first. Now, I know through a mutual acquaintance of ours that the Yanks are attempting to use the senator’s absence as a means of ensuring that Arnold’s defence bill becomes law, and they have it in their minds - or at least Ban has it in his - that the best way to get public perception onside of something as fully ridiculous as using drones to spy on their own citizens is to convince them of some intellectual contagion. Terrorism.  An easier sell with an Arabic surname at play, to be sure. Before you think to inquire, I don’t know what happened to Arnold, Inspector, I don’t know if my brother or his boyfriend were involved, but I have it on authority that the feds want to frame an innocent woman for a supposed crime. I’m prepared to make it worth your while if you make sure they can’t. Name your price, Inspector._ <<

Richard Ferguson hated Eleonore Hewlett. He hated her mirthless laughter. He hated the life she lived, the realities that assured his ruin with each of her successes. He hated that she extended limited regard she seemed to have for her own life to the good people inversely affected by the information she felt herself free to share. More than anything, however, he hated that he had to question if she was truly the villain in his narrative or anyone else’s.

“Do you believe Edmund shares your particular dedication to ' _Law. Order. Authority.'_?”

>> _It depends if you think any two people would chose to define those words in the same sense._ <<

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you find yourself saying, _‘Okay … geez Tav, that was_ [whatever your assessment], _but you could have done more to make your original characters likeable.’_ Oh boy, do I ever have a series of recommendations for you. I cannot get enough of Reinette_de_la_Saintonge’s gorgeous prose and poetry and her (much different) interpretations of Elizabeth Gwillim and a Hewlett sister are the things of envy. Please, please, please go treat yourselves to The Colonel's Portrait and Roses and Thistles, I promise on my life it will be the best part of your week as it often is of mine. 
> 
> So then … contextual notes!
> 
> SCIAF is the Scottish branch of Caritas, an international charity which Google informs me is known both as CRS and CCUSA in North America.
> 
> The French Foreign Legion was created in 1831 for foreign recruits. Though part of the French military, allegiance is sworn to the Legion itself rather than to France. After three years of service French citizenship is granted, or, as in this case, when someone is injured in battel due to a provision rather poetically dubbed "Français par le sang versé".
> 
> The first Anglo-Afghan War lasted from 1839 to 1842. The Afghans won.
> 
> The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
> 
> The Daily Mail is a real newspaper, it is privately owned, though clearly not by Simcoe’s long-dead real-life spouse. 
> 
> There is a City of Norfolk in Virginia, on the east coast of the United States and a County of Norfolk on the east coast of England. Both sites serve some military importance (USN and RAF, respectively). Keep in mind (and then forget, until I remind you again in another ten chapters or so that last we saw Tarleton he was on his way to Virginia. We will never see Najma. Take that however you will for now.)
> 
> I think that is it. Am I missing anything beyond offering up a whole-hearted apology for such a disappointing chapter? I am sorry. I felt it had to be this way. Let me make it up to you. Give me another chance. We can make this work. (… _but can Ben and Caleb?!?!_ Find out next time!)
> 
>  
> 
> Here is a preview if you are thus inclined.
> 
>  
> 
> XOXO - Tav


	30. The River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb proves a bright spot in Ben’s otherwise awful week.  
> Until he doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s up, lovely faces? I’ll tell you, because I am back _way_ sooner than I ever expected to be. The good news about this update is that I have finally gotten to use parts of the Akinbode / Ben confrontation that has been on my hard drive for … I don’t really even want to think how long. The BETTER news, at least for me as a writer, is that in the thirtieth chapter of my fandom magnum opus, I _finally_ get to lay bare a clue I left for you on page two of the first. Did you catch it? ;) I think it has been referenced in everyone’s POV by this point.
> 
> Okay, okay – but that brings me to the BEST news, for me personally, as a reader. Namely most of my mates have posted or updated glorious fic this week and I simply cannot wait to read, kudo and comment. So if my notes are a bit short, you’ll understand, yes?
> 
> One thing we won’t skip is the standard acknowledgement of potentially upsetting subject matter. Warnings include: religiosity, sexuality, office stress at every level, body image – oh. And there is a short(ish) sex scene.
> 
> We good? Let’s go!

It was 10 AM on Sunday morning when DI Benjamin Tallmadge awoke to the familiar sound of an electronic device demanding attention in the way a small child whose vocabulary had been reduced to a monosyllable by a sudden stimulus might. It was 10 AM on Sunday morning and DI Benjamin Tallmadge, dreary and dreamy, swiped his finger across the screen he found beside him in hopes of silencing it for five minutes more. The gesture did nothing to quiet the alarm, but Ben closed his eyes in defiance, looking for sleep but finding instead the catharsis that came with having spent the night in the arms of someone who sought to understand him on his own terms. He felt his sprits rise though his body lay still, sore from a night spent under the weight of the man he heard making chit-chat with his dachshund in the kitchen. He could smell coffee over the meat and eggs he heard sizzling on his stovetop. For the first time in what felt an eternity, pleasure overwhelmed his sense of purpose. He was falling in love. It was 10:02 and Ben laid with his eyes shut. The phone beeped again. The world could wait five minutes more.

Five minutes he thought, blissfully unaware that he was designating and defining the timeframe in which his happiness was fated to last. When the frantic beeps finally forced his eyes open, he would quickly realise that he was not in fact falling for one Caleb Brewster. He was not falling at all; rather, he had hit rock bottom somewhere over the course of his current investigation.

It would be five minutes before Caleb transitioned on paper from witness to suspect. Fifteen days would then separate him, his guest and their growing affections for one another from the ‘when’ in which it would officially ‘cease to matter.’ For the morning that then remained to them after everything seemed lost to the conventional chaos inherent in sharing a comforter with a near stranger, instinct and experience would inform the Detective Inspector that his tenure with Special Crimes was coming to a close. Ben would hear his internal demons as they shouted out in a voice too akin to his own the self-same reasons Hamilton, Burr, and - in a particularly cruel twist of fate – Akinbode would later cite during his formal deposition:

Gross negligence.

Gross incompetence.

Gross abuse of power.

In fifteen days, Ben would not be positioned to defend himself against these charges. He would surrender his badge and service weapon without much of a fight, having already fully ceded his certainty to scepticism. Afterwards, Ben would not retreat to his own soiled fortresses, but to those of the man whom, in five minutes, he would come to learn was an enemy spy.

In that moment and those to follow, Ben could not anticipate that Caleb’s name would not once be brought up in the dismissal he foresaw. There were snakes in the garden, yes, but the man in his kitchen who had spent the night in his bed would ultimately save him from their venous bite. But for the next five minutes, none of this mattered. None of this yet existed in a way he was conscious of. Nothing did. Ben laid and listened, hearing the sound of his pulse quicken to match the melody Caleb hummed to the hound, hearing bacon sizzle, coffee brew and eggs burn. Caleb Brewster had come back with a mess of a man to a mess of a flat and chosen to stay with him through the night, fourteen stories removed from reason.

The phone rang again at 10:05. It took more than a minute of the same swelling pitch for Ben to realise that it was not the din of his alarm.

At 10:07 on a bright, sunny Sunday morning in March, DI Benjamin Tallmadge was fated to mentally register that in spite the semblance of domestic bliss surrounding him, he was in hell. He heard Caleb shuffle around in his kitchen in search for a clean plate and could not decide if the sound he then felt himself swallow in response had been a cry or scream.

 

* * *

 

Ben Tallmadge once believed in law and order with a religious fervent that in spite of his Pentecostal upbringing would otherwise have failed his psyche. Although there had been pervious incidences throughout the course of his career that might have given root to seeds of doubt, their flowers failed to bloom until the Friday prior. When they at long last opened themselves to the sun, they stank of a corruption of the worst kind, of cracks in the façade of the judiciary system in which malfeasance was not only invited to grow but encouraged to flourish.

Aaron Burr, the ADA who had been assigned to the Arnold Investigation after Smith’s abdication from the case, had been unsympathetic to each argument Ben and his senior staff presented in hopes of getting him to sign off on a series of additional search warrants. The DI had spent the better part of the past hour trying to explain that the lack of evidence at Whitehall gave ground for his team to continue the line of inquiry they were currently pursuing. The country estate was the residence of one of the case’s prime suspects as well as two it its persons of interest. What was found and -more critically- what was _not_ brought a number of alibis into question.

His unit had wasted hours that morning searching Judge Woodhull’s office at his son Abraham’s insistence that Edmund Hewlett had hidden evidence in that room. What Hewlett had ‘hidden’ in and amongst the library’s legal encyclopaedias and assorted literature seemed only to be the contents of his recycling bin – half-solved equations on crumpled graphing paper, receipts for ordinary purchases, photographs obscured by the fade of time and memos containing thoughts that were no longer urgent. Initially, Ben had imagined the younger Woodhull as working either directly or in conjunction with Hewlett to lead the Special Crimes team from personally damning evidence which, admittedly, might have nothing whatsoever to do with their case. Abraham’s wife Mary had given an account that she was having an affair with John Graves Simcoe – could her husband perhaps have bought himself more time to cover up anything that could support her claim? Ben had asked. Certainly, the scandal - should it be proven or made public - would sully the family’s standing in the deeply conservative circles in which they travelled. DC Baker however had found nothing to tie Mary Woodhull to her supposed lover – something noteworthy even if one was not taking her husband’s odd behaviour into account.

Slightly removed from this concern was the questionable discovery of her fingerprints (and those of her supposed lover) on the one item in the attic-turned-apartment that pathology had elected to treat as evidence – a soccer jersey caked in invisible gunshot residue that had been ‘hidden’ under Hewlett’s mattress. CSI advised that multiple weapons had been fired by whomever had last donned the Toffee’s away-colours. DS Yilmaz had explained that it seemed to her a bad and blatant attempt to lead them down another rabbit hole, based solely on her assessment of a sporting rivalry in a midsized city across the Atlantic – something Baker, Sanchez and the external assistance Ben sought from Google and Wikipedia also spoke to.

The inspector however was interested in the jersey on its own merits, removed from the details of those involved in the gang-style street-and-stadium violence that had grown around a sport so dull as to lend itself to the pursuit of such entertainment. It was not the team emblem or the fact that it evidently clashed with Hewlett’s flashy commercial support of a rival franchise, it was not the gunshot residue or that it was hidden, but rather that had been so easily discovered. Unlike his sergeant, Ben was of the mind that instead of aiming to distract the police unit he knew to be all-too-eager to book him for any slight, Edmund Hewlett was subtly and intentionally trying to point them in the right direction. As Police Constable Sanchez had reported to him after she had sat in whilst Dr Martha Dandridge interrogated Simcoe, the only time the federally-contracted psychologist seemed to take notes was when the witness spoke of his involvement in an association soccer team.

‘ _Of added interest_ ,’ Ben explained to his boss, ‘ _on Wednesday,_ _DS Russo here uncovered medical records of nearly all of the players whom Simcoe captains in his search of John André’s office, excluding only Hewlett and someone I gather from Sanchez’s recollection is named Roger._ ’

‘ _Perhaps,_ ’ Russo suggested, ‘ _one Robert Rogers of Setauket, a contractor working on a home owned by Mary and Richard Woodhull, and for whom Abraham seems to preform odd jobs from time to time._ ’

Burr did not offer a response or any other indication that he had been listening. Russo shifted, shooting Ben a discouraged look as he transferred his bulk and balance between his feet.

Yet to be deterred, Ben continued, albeit increasingly agitated at the complete absence of interest in the findings of this case from the one person positioned to give him the tools he needed to solve it. ‘ _DC Braxton,_ ’ he said, ‘ _saw the same names scattered among the files he found and photographed on Dandridge’s desk at Columbia. Whatever she might be to the FBI,_ ’ he sighed, ‘ _we know she is involved in a research project with the psychologist who took to ground the night Arnold went missing and we know she is -for reasons we have yet to learn- keeping many of André’s records confidential._ ’

‘ _Out of the question_ ,’ the ADA answered before one had been asked.

Ben knew his unit was on the verge of tying it all together, but unfortunately, this was where the discussion often had a habit of ending with Burr. The ADA reverted to reminding them without the curtesy of feigning concern that his office had received and angry phone call from his right honourable colleague in New York’s Court of Appeals as though this gave his inaction any justification of which to speak. ‘ _Had DA Smith been left in charge of proceedings_ ,’ Ben spat, ‘ _my team could get to work rather than dancing in circles with a forced and false sense of loyalty. Everyone is equal under the law. If doctors Dandridge and André are covering something related to Arnold’s disappearance, they are susceptible to a police search. It should not come into consideration who their friends are in Washington,_ ’ he insisted, ‘ _if anything; the fact that their project seems to be receiving Defence Budget funding  which Arnold and his senatorial committee would have approved is all the more reason to look further into the files found open in a university office._

‘ _The fact that one of Dandridge and André’s test subjects happens to lease a flat in Judge Woodhull’s residence should not eliminate him from suspicion or Whitehall from being treated as an area of interest. Everyone_ ,’ Ben stressed again, ‘ _is equal under the law._ _This is America, not some post-soviet oligarchy in which exception can be purchased through personal and financial connections. Before the District Attorney removed herself from the investigation to avoid any conflict of interest or possible claims of corruption_,’ Ben nearly shouted, ‘ _she saw to it that a search warrant was written for her own daughter’s apartment. The law demanded it of her as it now demanded it of her successor, Mr Burr, Sir!_ ’ 

‘ _You think Nancy doesn’t play the games you stand here and accuse me of?_ ’ Burr challenged. At this, Russo lowered his gaze. Ben did not have to look at Yilmaz to know that she was rolling her eyes in his direction by means of silently indicating her agreement. He hated that his promotion to inspector had been at her expense, he hated that the ADA’s obfuscations and empty objections underlined her insubordination while adding credit to the argument from which it stemmed. Yilmaz was right, he admitted to himself. He owed his current position to the mishandling of the investigation of Sarah Livingston’s death under Smith’s predecessor. The justice system was broken. It occurred to Ben that he was in the wrong job altogether, though the same might be said of the man set on making his harder than need be. He narrowed his gaze, wondering if it might be worth it to hear Jordan out the next time he brought up retiring from the force and joining him in fighting institutionalized acts of injustice at his prestigious law firm, paradoxical as his plea sounded at its surface.

 _‘Sir, the photographs Constable Braxton took in Martha Dandridge’s office -’_ he started.

 _‘Are not to be treated as evidence as they were obtained without a warrant,’_ Burr warned.

‘ _Sir,_ ’ Ben said, again with more assertion than his boss’s hardening expression advised him his current position allowed.

_‘Refresh me, Tallmadge, how many years has it been since the DA’s now-ex-husband published his famous article exposing the hypocrisy and questionable legality of many of Judge Woodhull’s rulings? You must have been in college at the time.’_

It had been a rhetorical question. Ben responded regardless.

_‘High school. Though it was required reading at university -’_

_‘I don’t know that DA Smith and Judge Woodhull have ever discussed it,’_ Burr interrupted. _‘I highly suspect however that it effected his decision in a number of cases Nancy has since argued before his bench. But there has never been any retaliation from her office. Until now. Why?’_ he demanded as though he thought any answer relevant.

 _‘The warrant she had written is not a ‘retaliation’ against Judge Woodhull, as you put it,’_ Ben objected. ‘ _His tenant is a suspect in my investigation_. _His daughter-in-law Mary has given my team reason to question her alibi as well, and I hardly think that Nancy Smith would step down from her role in the investigation on the condition that a warrant be issued were she -’_

 _‘Anna Strong took a job as assistant counsel to Jordan Akinbode in the class action he is bringing against the City of New York,_ ’ Yilmaz interjected, inching ever-so-slightly forward. ‘ _Any new-found affection Nancy may have for her would-be son-in-law aside, we all know she wants nothing more than for her daughter to follow in her footsteps, and so long as we are speaking honestly about our esteemed colleagues, I think it very likely that Woodhull will consider the City’s warrant against his property during argument. ADA Adams had this in the bag and now-’_

 _‘Sergeant, are you suggesting that DA Smith intentionally sabotaged one of her subordinates?’_ Ben barked.

_‘I am repeating - as I was told over drinks last night - that the DA saw a chance and she took it. I happened to mention that my assignment informed me that Anna wanted to buy the bar she has been working in for the past several years and-’_

_‘I sincerely hope you were not talking about the case as I hope the DA was not asking about it.’_

_‘You have too much faith in the system, Ben,’_ Yilmaz shrugged, her bony shoulders seeming to sharpen into blades. Ben wished he did not agree with her assessment nearly as much as he wished she had not chosen this particular platform on which to play power politics and prove her prestige before a man Ben should not have need to bring onside.

 _‘You don’t have children, do you Tallmadge?’_ Burr asked, continuing as though he spoke to a minor, _‘Methodology aside, Yilmaz is right. Smith was all but forced to dissolve a marriage to a man she loved over his fight with Richard Woodhull and let the matter rest until she could use it to her advantage. Now she is in the process of punishing him for his behaviour towards her family since William Smith’s exposé was published by forcing a rule against her office. Woodhull will be widely criticised for his resulting opinion or -less likely, descent - which won’t help his chances on staying on the short-list for Justice Scalia’s replacement. Meanwhile, I imagine, as no doubt does my boss, that her daughter Anna Strong will fall back in love with the law, seemingly obtaining an easy victory out of an improbable case. But you? You’ll have made a number of powerful enemies if you continue with your –forgive me – undo interest in Whitehall and its residents. You found nothing connecting Mrs Woodhull to your other suspect – much less to Arnold and the only thing keeping Hewlett under suspicion is a jersey from a soccer team you can’t imagine him supporting?’_ Burr chided. _‘His family contributes millions to the City of Liverpool’s economy, all of the various club paraphernalia could be coincidental, could correlate to the people his parents do business with rather than indicate sympathy to whichever mid-table outfit the town houses,’_ he scoffed, shaking his head. _‘Even if there is gunshot residue on the garment, it tells us nothing without a weapon – which I will remind you, you did not find. Not a Whitehall, which, according to Judge Woodhull, you turned over itself. Not at DeJong’s Tavern, where - Christ Tallmadge! - according to pathology, no evidence whatsoever was found to suggest that a gun was in use. But go on. Keep looking for a reason to lock up the DA’s son-in-law. See what happens.’_

 _‘The entire property seems to have been washed with bleach -’_ Ben began to protest.

 _‘Which would do nothing to erase trace elements. I checked with CSI on this. Did you?’_ Burr demanded.

 _‘Sir,’_ Ben started, inhaling deeply through clenched teeth. _‘You don’t find it at all suspicious that a bar that barely manages to pass its heath inspection each year -’_

_‘I don’t know what you are looking for, Tallmadge, and I am not convinced that you do either. I know for a fact however, that if you continue threatening the families of the District Attorney and the Chief Judge of the State’s highest court that whether it be it tomorrow or in three decades, you will retire as an inspector, not as a chief – as you ought. Keep your eye on the ball, Ben.’_

_‘Forgive me, Sir, but for the purpose of this conversation and this case, the projected trajectory of my career is entirely irrelevant. Leave them to their inter-family drama – I would not characterize Whitehall or DeJong’s as lacking sufficient evidence.’_

_‘Um. Boss,’_ Russo nudged him. Ben nodded for him to continue. _‘Mr Burr, to return to what you were saying about Liverpool and whatever business the Hewlett family has there … do you follow soccer by chance?_ ’ Both Ben and the ADA stared at him, confused as to why this was being asked, and Ben, at least, confused by its inquisitor. Like himself, Russo was a red-blooded American, someone who might be described as a good-ol’-boy had he a different zip code. His interest in any given sport correlated directly with the number of concussions that could be produced in gameplay. Ben looked at Yilmaz whose gestures told him that she did not know where this was going either. Her bones formed themselves into blades again in a wordless expression of ignorance. Feeling awkward and unnerved at the sight of his second’s concealed weapons, he turned back to her partner, telling himself to trust in Russo’s intuition.

‘ _Only insofar as my daughter plays_ ,’ Burr replied, still perplexed after a long pause.

_‘On a team coached by Anna Strong, is that right?’_

_‘Until recently.’_

‘ _And who coaches it now?_ ’ Russo asked as though he already knew the answer.

‘ _John Graves Simcoe_ ,’ Burr said, addressing Ben instead of his subordinate as through he expected a challenge from the front rather than one of the flanks.

‘ _That doesn’t worry you?_ ’ Russo replied rhetorically, causing Ben to fight a smile as he watched one of his sergeants wield the internal opposition’s preferred oral device against him. ‘ _No, that doesn’t worry you. Phillip Hamilton plays for the same team … which means two city kids get driven out to some backwater twice or three times a week despite there being four-hundred-seventy-eight teams in their division within the downtown area. I don’t want to get into the why of that exactly when there exists a larger question of both yourself and the Assistant Director In-Charge of the FBI’s Manhattan field office being so comfortable … almost cosy with our case. On the topic of appearances and conflicts of interest … maybe you can tell me because the FBI has not been helpful here – why isn’t Hamilton’s office, and why aren’t you personally willing to take Simcoe or Hewlett seriously as suspects? Is there a legally valid reason why we might be able to eliminate them as well?’_

‘ _Hamilton …_ ’ Burr stopped where he began.

‘ _You used to have a practice together, if I am not mistaken. Is there something of a Woodhull/Smith rivalry in there somewhere?_ ’ The question was not relevant, but Ben raised his eyebrows with Russo’s when Burr seemed on the verge of capitulation.

‘ _Hamilton’s interest are in line with Washington’s … George Washington’s_ ’ he clarified after a pause. ‘ _The Sec Def has asked us, rather, he has asked Hamilton to hold back on this one. I have no choice but to trust them._ ’

Ben clenched his fists tighter until his fingernails began to burrow themselves into his palms.

‘ _Is that the real reason Smith stepped down?_ ’ Yilmaz asked. Burr did not answer her. ‘ _Your job is to find Arnold,_ ’ he advised the team quietly. ‘ _Not to dig into the intricacies international defence … possible trade interests ..._ ’

‘ _Burr, what do you know?_ ’ Ben demanded.

‘ _That you need to do as instructed_ ,’ he warned once more.

‘ _How am I supposed to do anything without support?_ ’ Ben shouted back.

‘ _Tallmadge, I advise you to leave me office._ ’

 ‘ _Don’t worry boss_ ,’ Russo whispered as he took him by the shoulder and directed him towards the door before he could offer a career-ending retort. ‘ _I know how we can hope to beat them at their own game._ ’

‘ _I don’t even understand what they are playing_ ,’ Ben replied loud enough that he was certain ADA Burr could still hear him from the other side of the glass-pained door.

‘ _Tiki-taka from the sounds of it_ ,’ Yilmaz said, ‘ _but I think what my partner is proposing would be better put as kick-and-rush._ ’

‘ _Soccer,_ ’ Russo summarized.

Ben squinted in slight-disbelief, questioning briefly if he had ever seen any statistics on the sport’s capacity for closed-head brain injuries. ‘ _Mike, Hadi, I have to be honest, I don’t understand the analogy,_ ’ he admitted. ‘ _And I don’t follow the game._ ’

‘ _Oh I don’t either, Boss,_ ’ Russo said, hitting Yilmaz on her shoulder. ‘ _As to analogies_ , _I personally wasn’t making one._ ’

 

* * *

 

‘ _Sanchez!_ ’ the New Jersian boomed once they were back in the ever-hectic bullpen after an elevator ride on which his partner dutifully explained that ‘tiki-taka’ was style of play characterized by short passes, largely associated with the city of Barcelona or some soccer team that wore its name. Russo chided that the joke only worked if she did not have to explain it without giving Yilmaz time to inform them as to what she had meant with ‘kick-and-rush.’ Ben felt that whatever it was, it sounded a fitting punishment for everyone upstairs.

‘ _Ayy! Sanchez! Need you for a minute,_ ’ Russo bellowed again as they approached his cubicle.

At the sound of her surname, PC Letty Sanchez stood up with a jolt and addressed them with a salute. ‘ _At ease,_ ’ Russo laughed, but his trainee waited for Ben’s order before lowering her hand and relaxing her posture. The inspector smiled in spite of himself, looking at the rest of his team who had not risen from their desks or done much in way of greeting. He wondered how long it would take before he could expect the same show of respect from the young constable he had commandeered from another unit on the basis that she had needed to take a bathroom break when he had needed someone in uniform. Ben Tallmadge was highly secretive by both nature and profession. Having forced the new recruit to ‘ _hold it in_ ’ while Simcoe waxed poetic about a horse and the boy who shot it, he was reluctant to return her to whichever beat she had originally been assigned after basic training. Letty was nineteen, wide-eyed and untested. She had never attended college, never left the city, never worked a case and never learned to drive. Ben would not have so much as read her application had she requested a transfer. Now he could not let her leave. When she returned his smile, Ben felt his face fall. Letty Sanchez was nineteen. She had yet to understand that far from a promotion, Special Crimes was a prison sentence.

‘ _Tallmadge?_ ’ He glanced over. DC Braxton held out a Styrofoam cup of half-eaten instant ramen in his direction and kicked the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet as though he meant to suggest there were more inside for the taking. Ben shook his head as he heard his stomach audibly protest his refusal. Four years of routine eighteen-hour days spent largely behind a desk had already caused his trousers to contract uncomfortable around his thighs and torso. He avoided mirrors most days, and on this day in particular, he was subconsciously counting calories he had yet to consume. He equated each anticipated energy unit with the whispers he caught on occasion,

 – _It is like, is that a gun in your pocket or do you need to check your dryer setting? –_

_\- Every time I see Tallmadge, I am reminded of the music I listened to in high school. –_

_\- Do you think his wife does his shopping, or do you think he just squeezes himself into her skinnies?_ –

Ben’s stomach growled again and Braxton repeated his offer. Again, he politely declined. Russo cleared his throat and Ben did his best to rid his id of natural impulse and his ego of conscious doubt and desire. He had bigger problems than his bum and other awkward budges his trousers accentuated, or so he reminded himself as he came to realise how very much he was dreading dinner. He had a nineteen-year-old constable and a sergeant who imagined that after only two days with the most demanding unit on the force she had something to contribute. Ben sighed and waited.

‘ _Sanchez, why don’t you tell DI Tallmadge what you were telling me and DS Yilmaz earlier,_ ’ Russo said.

‘ _Um … about the football -_ ’

‘ _What did I tell you about the misuse of that word?_ ’ he scorned.

‘ _S-sorry … that is what you were asking about though or_ -’ Sanchez stammered without removing her eye’s from Ben.

‘ _Go on, Constable_ ,’ Yilmaz smiled encouragingly, elbowing Russo as she hissed, ‘ _don’t be mean, she is already nervous_.’ Ben noticed the way the junior officer was looking at him and could guess why, suddenly feeling ill at the suggestion. Her light brown eyes unconsciously alternated between his face and the polyester/cotton blend pants from a suit he had gotten at Primark but wore now with a more elegant blazer – as though that made much difference. Sanchez smiled as she began to speak. Ben felt lost for words. Girls had not been interested in him when he was young and naïve enough to hide magazines full of naked ones in his nightstand because it seemed normal. Or maybe they had and he simply had not noticed in an era when everyone wore dark-wash skinny jeans and his eyes fell to the same place he now seemed to force those of his colleagues’.

Ben hoped his sexual preferences were indeed the stuff of office gossip; that Yilmaz would out him to the young constable with the casual ease in which she had brought up the subject of her own sinful adventures in the squad car yesterday while driving back from Simcoe’s flat. Ben was not comfortable addressing such matters. Yesterday had been the second time in his life he had ever taken part of that short discussion, a discussion he had never once opened.

‘ _Look … I know and I am cool with it, I mean we cool … but I’m not interested,_ ’ Jordan had told him years ago in the locker room showers, trying to avert his eyes from the boner Ben had not been aware of until the moment all of his mental energy found itself employed in trying to wish it away. He coughed out an incoherent string of apologies which had seemed to his fellow tenth-grade an invitation to compile every pamphlet he had ever come across addressing etiquette for ‘LBGTQ Allies’ into a single, awkward sentence. Ben had interrupted, begging him not to tell his father when he saw him later at their Confirmation classes.

 _‘I ain’t going to mention this to anyone_ ,’ Jordan said quickly, forcing himself to laugh to lighten the mood. He had stopped abruptly when the blood Ben had prayed out of his penis began demanding refuge in his cheeks. Seeing him blush, his friend tried to backtrack, increasingly cautious of each word he spoke, lest he land on one of those belonging to the ever-increasing list of terms deemed offensive by a community of which he was not part. Jordan was not afraid of him or something that he had yet to experience as a closeted fifteen-year old in a small upper-middle class suburb. Jordan was afraid of saying something that might cause him shame. He was trying to be kind. ‘ _It is like that for me too, um, with race – not that, I mean_ ,’ Ben stuttered, unsure if he could say ‘race’ or not. Jordan then laughed genuinely as he told him to relax. ‘ _I knew you were white a full decade before he knew you were queer._ ’

To his then-teammate’s word and credit, they never spoke of it again.

Yilmaz, thankfully, had given him no such assurances.

Ben did not want to tell Sanchez for the same reasons he did not want to tell his family. He was not even sure he wanted her to know. Once she came to know him, her interest would be sullied without his having to say anything that might strain their working relationship the way ‘ _your feelings are inappropriate_ ’ or ‘ _you are way too young for me_ ’ might. He saw the Lamb of God hanging from the constable’s neck, Christ suspended in his final scene of dying on the Cross for the sins of all mankind. He glanced over at his second, at the silken scarf she wore around her’s, knowing that she would have used it to cover her hair if she had had time to make it to Mosque. Ben felt a twinge of jealousy pierce though him. Everyone on his staff came from a deeply conservative background, but the inspector felt he alone bore the full weight of the societal expectations assigned to him at birth – in his case, by his father’s occupation.

Even if the reverend suspected, even if he could eventually accept his son as he was, Ben could not expect the same of his flock. He feared _their_ judgement more than he feared _The_ Judgement as it is written in the Gospel according to Luke. He hated that he knew the book and verse offhand. He knew them all that way. It was inherent.

Baba Yilmaz, by contrast, who insisted his daughter keep a misbaha in her purse, knew she fucked an infidel during office hours. They talked about it openly and Ben hated this, too. He wondered if it was easier for an RN than it was for a reverend, if a biological background helped in what a theological one hindered. He wondered what either man had to say about death. He wondered if he would ever be capable of talking about it at all.

Not many people knew that his former partner on the force once wore that same distinction in a domestic sense. There had been no conversation between him and Nate – no ‘ _Are you? Me too._ ’ They came together and found answers where Ben had always expected questions to exist. They came together and then his world fell apart.

The funeral service had been held in his father’s church. Ben had not been invited to sit with the Hale family. He had not been invited to speak, which he considered was probably for the best. ‘ _I loved him’_ would have soiled Nate’s memory, his father’s house of worship, and, in the political climate to that time, Ben’s further career chances on the force. Sometimes he sat in the same pew he had on the day his partner was buried, looking at the cross suspended in front of the stained glass window combining to cast a shadow in the same shape over him. He wondered if the funeral had been when he began questioning scripture. He wondered now what had kept him from questioning the culture and teachings of the increasingly dogmatic state he had chosen to serve as a police officer.

Ben blinked a tear from his eye. He realised that Sanchez had been speaking all the while and that he had not heard a word. His eyes darted up from the crucifix half-buried in the young constable’s cleavage, now certain of Christ’s judgement. He cleared his throat. ‘ _Could you repeat that?_ ’ he asked. ‘ _Sorry I … I haven’t slept._ ’

‘ _There is an officer’s team from another station in the same league that our suspects play in. Sanchez knows a few of the guys from her time on the beat and Yilmaz knows the organizers from her days in NYU’s MSA. If we can get them to rearrange the game schedule we can test how Simcoe acts under pressure – Hewlett too, if Dandridge won’t tell us and we can’t find André_ ,’ Russo said, audibly annoyed. He smiled as if he meant to assure Ben his frustration was not with him, adding in a tone that did not change to match his expression, ‘ _No warrant needed. No going upstairs to get what is otherwise easily given._ ’

‘ _From what I gathered, that is what the Dandridge/André research is focused on, Sir – the psychological effects of fear in a closed social group; here, highly educated men with high-stress jobs and an established history of violence as it is reflected in their individual and team performance on the pitch,_ ’ Braxton said.

‘ _They have a lot to be afraid of this week,_ ’ Mr Sackett muttered.

‘ _Sanchez, this team … is it known the league over as a copper team?_ ’ Ben asked.

‘ _I wouldn’t know, Sir._ ’

‘ _They are, at least they were when I was playing,_ ’ Baker interjected.

‘ _They are called the NYPD Blues, I can’t imagine that most miss the reference,_ ’ Yilmaz said.

‘ _It won’t work,_ ’ Ben said as he began to pace. ‘ _No. Simcoe is too smart for that. He won’t overreact if he knows we are testing him ... It won’t work if we go to watch the game they would otherwise be playing either. Between them, Hewlett and Strong know all of our faces. Sanchez – clever thinking, truly, but -_ ’

‘ _Sir, to adjust on Sanchez’s idea_ ,’ Baker offered, ‘ _I used to play on a different team that has faced up against Bye Week. I am sure I am still on their roster. Being that I have never personally met any of the suspects in the case, unless we are counting Abraham and Richard Woodhull, I could … do some undercover, if you think it would help. My accent might._ ’

‘ _What position do you play?_ ’ Yilmaz asked. ‘ _You would need to put one if not both of our primes under pressure without having it look like -_ ’

‘ _I’ve never played as a striker but -_ ’

‘ _You don’t need to score; you need to fuck up Simcoe’s ability to do so. You need to foul him if you think you can safely manage it. From what he did to Hewlett, the man seems out for blood at the slightest offense. Get him carded early, get him to try to address the call at half time and clock him for attempting to assault an officer. Hewlett will likely voice some objection and you can invite him to do so down at the station_.’

Ben liked the idea less the longer the discussion lasted.

‘ _I want a hand-written sworn statement from both of them as soon as possible_ ,’ Sackett said, averting his attention but not his bi-speckled eyes from Braxton’s computer. ‘ _Tallmadge, take a look at this and tell me what you see._ ’

Ben walked around to better view the screen; Braxton surrendered his chair. There were digitalized copies of the evidence collected from Richard Woodhull’s study on display. ‘ _I don’t think this gives us anything conclusive on its own_ ,’ he said after studying the monitor for a moment.

‘ _No? Compare these to some of the text messages Hewlett has sent over the past month._ ’

‘ _I am not sure what I am reading_ ,’ Ben admitted.

‘ _Exactly. I don’t think Hewlett always is either. He exhibits a number of errors common to dyslexics. Except,_ ’ Sackett smiled as he pulled up a different file, ‘ _when he is texting John Graves Simcoe. And this is quite a recent development. Look at the time stamps. I don’t think him capable of composing such flawless text with such speed._ ’

‘ _Spell check, perhaps?_ ’ Ben suggested.

‘ _I thought so at first, but when he writes other people – slower, you’ll note, than he corresponds with Simcoe -_ ’

‘ _He often confuses or omits vowels and misjudges which consents are repeated,_ ’ Ben squinted.

_‘It is my belief that Simcoe is somehow texting himself using Hewlett’s device. From what I understand he is something of a poet.’_

_‘Not to interrupt, but when we interviewed him a few days ago, Simcoe said that he was held back in school due to linguistic difficulties,_ ’ Sanchez said.

‘ _I think that might have more to do with oral than grammatical issues,_ ’ Russo commented to her.

Ben nodded. ‘ _No chance we can bring them both in now to ask what that is about?_ ’

‘ _We don’t even have a warrant to monitor their mobile devices,_ ’ Braxton said. ‘ _Normally it is not difficult to obtain, even after the fact -’_

 _‘But the bureaucratic system is hardest to hack when it has already been corrupted,_ ’ Sackett mumbled, voicing what they were collectively thinking. They had no choice but to proceed with the proposed manoeuvre. Ben still did not like it at all.

 

* * *

 

Between Burr, Sanchez’s plan, Sackett’s linguistic discovery and having his second call him aside to tell him to ‘ _handle his shit_ ’ in reference to the way she noticed him staring at the newest member of their unit, Ben Tallmadge was an hour late for his belated birthday dinner with his best friend from high school. When he arrived at the restaurant, he found Jordan Akinbode already buried deep in a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Without looking up, Jordan greeted him with the words ‘ _Abby and I spilt._ ’

‘ _God … Jordan_ ,’ Ben stammered as he took his seat. ‘ _I am so sorry. Do you want to talk about it?’_

He nodded and for the next thirty minutes told Ben in more words than marked his usual standard that the woman he loved, the woman for whom he had purchased a home on a quiet street, the woman whose intelligence and strength of character had inspired and influenced him over the course of his higher education and career advancement, that the same woman had been fucking her boss all the while. He had evidently used much the same language with Abigail when he had gone to speak to her about the content of a novel she was in the process of publishing in which she all but slandered their entire circle of friends. Anna was a slut. Simcoe was psychotic. Hewlett a sociopath. Richard did not love his son and Abe did not love his wife. Peggy and Aberdeen were interchangeable, both insufferable narcissists in a fashion Abigail argued was common to all women in their early twenties. And he? He was cast as an illiterate slave who put far too much expectation of a character based on her. Abigail said it was historically accurate, to which he replied that it had nothing to do with _their_ history. ‘ _Oh you think?_ ’ she said.

‘ _I do now_ ,’ Jordan mused into his wine glass, adding, ‘ _She is not returning my calls_.’

‘ _Have you tried her boss? The one you say she was sleeping with? This Dr John André,_ ’ Ben asked on instinct, coached and cultured by a decade on the force to consider the fracture in his friend’s love life might play into the reason New York’s finest could not locate a key witness. His cases often overtook his ability to connect to the situations that played out before him on a human level. Ben and Jordan had been in this situation before with the clients and quotas, but the people Jordan had previously represented against charges Ben brought on behalf of the City spent four-hundred dollars to spend an hour in his business suite as he silently reviewed their corporate expenditures. They were not people whose company Jordan sought in his deepest sorrows. This did not register with him as his attempts at comfort became increasingly corrupted by his own ambition with each subtle inquiry.

By the time a second bottle had been opened, Jordan came to realise that they were having entirely different conversations before it entered into Ben’s consideration that he had not left the office.

‘ _I’m curious_ ,’ the detective inspector said of the shooting-party, ‘ _When Edmund Hewlett was with you at this Walmart … in New Jersey … after he had been instructed not to cross the border - in your presence I might add - was he, by chance wearing an Everton jersey – maybe one a bit too small for him?_ ’

‘ _I can’t fucking believe you_ ,’ Jordan replied slowly in an exaggeratingly flat tone. He leaned back in his chair, balancing it on it hind legs as he coldly confirmed in a baritone so hard and heavy Ben felt physically constricted by the sound, _‘Yeah. Yeah –the suspect- was wearing a pink Everton jersey from two-thousand-two and a pair of jorts Simcoe’d picked up in Chinatown for the sole purpose of pissing him off. Hew’d apparently been forced into these garments when his fiancée threw an eight-hundred-dollar suit in Simcoe’s machine, thereby ruining and robbing the suspect of his choice attire. The owner of the apartment refused to lend him anything else to wear when he returned from work or wherever with his illicit lover only to find that his bed was occupied by his oldest friend and the girl, I gather, he meant for poor Mary Woodhull to substitute. There was a set-to. Simcoe punched Hewlett and Anna hit Simcoe. Can’t speak to wheatear Mary took part in the melee or not but what I can say definitively, is that when I got there, the suspect – proud, poised, princely Edmund Hewlett – didn’t give a shit about looking like an idiot in front of all the world and his mates on what must have been one of the worst days of his life. Spent most of the night just making sure that I was alright. Not asking me about legal matters. Nothing like that. It’s funny … you know, I was so pissed at Simcoe last night. At both of them. At all of them. Angry that they asked me how I was holding up, thinking like – damn bitch I was with this woman for ten years! For ten fucking years! Practically raised her boy as my own and,’_ he stopped. ‘ _But they were being friends. I see now that I had no reason to expect the same from you, Inspector_.’

‘ _Jordan I_ -’ Ben started. The sudden thought that Simcoe and Hewlett had been in a fight hours before whenever Jordan swung by the former’s flat hindered his attempt at apology. He did not know if he voiced this concern with the narrative or not, but shortly after his weak extenuation Jordan rose, pulled a crisp a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and told Ben that the next time they saw each other it would be in court.

‘ _Not for this_ ,’ he spoke darkly as he paused passing Ben on his way to the door. ‘ _Whatever you think, my lads are innocent. Even if they weren’t, we both know I am too good a barrister to let it get that far.’_

He did not watch Jordan leave. There was no sense in following him when he was in no mind to forgive. Ben looked at the bottle, at Jordan’s undrunk fourth or fifth glass and the remnants of his first. He looked at the menu from which he had still not ordered, at the uneaten breadbasket that ordinarily served as a barrier from the unpleasantness of extended company. He felt uncomfortable in the restaurant. He never went out. Even now, the table felt longer, empty of all forms of elegance and extravagance. He might was well be at his desk, in one of the interrogation rooms, or better still, alone on a pew in his father’s church under the dark shadow cast by the symbol of God’s glory. Ben glanced at his mobile and set a reminder to write Jordan a decent apology tomorrow at midday. He frowned as he began to mentally construct the way in which he would express his sincere –

Sincere? Ben wondered at his own phrasing, deciding that this, too, was a form of social conditioning. ‘Sincere’, even ‘sorry’ felt false. Ben Tallmadge had barely slept in days. He had been given charge of a highly public case, the solving of which was marred by political manoeuvring, personal ties and private interest. His name was subject again to slander in the news cycle for crime of which he had been acquitted. He had been removed from an investigation into the opioid trade he had been working on for years, an investigation that had caused his partner his life and yet his colleagues resented what they perceived as his failure to regain focus. His only outside friend parted with vague threats when Ben spoke of his own troubles, asking for help in the only way he still knew how.

But no one asked him if he was alright. No one, except for the waiter, to whom Ben replied that he would quite like a beer and whichever variant of meat and potatoes he had thoughtlessly elected with a nod when he tired of listening to the boy recite a list of specials. ‘ _That_ ,’ he said, ‘ _and a pen if it is not too much trouble.’_

By the time his steak and starch arrived, Ben was on his second beer. Filling a page of a notebook he always carried with him, he had finally landed on what it was about Jordan’s exit that so unnerved him. Jordan Akinbode practiced corporate law strictly, save for a divorce agreement he printed on company letterhead for Anna Strong but had not had a hand in drafting. Jordan had never defended someone on charges of kidnapping or murder, and yet he was so self-assured with ‘ _my lads are innocent. Even if they weren’t, we both know I am too good a barrister to let it get [to court]_ ’ that Ben’s gut told him the confidence was not forced or accidental. Hewlett had already confessed to corporate fraud, the plural form he used for friend suggested that Simcoe was in on his current scheme. If could figure out what Hewlett and Simcoe were doing, he could figure out why Hamilton, Lafayette and Washington seemed happy to hinder the Arnold investigation by any means possible. But Burr was right. For now it served him best to play along. Humming a tune from the Broadway musical and imagining his office-enemies in the roles that borrowed their names, he texted Hamilton to see if he had could have anything sent from his office, curious to what the feds might request.

Satisfied, Ben finished another beer and devoured the contents of his plate past the point of satiation, discreetly unbuttoning the trousers set on showing – as all of his did – how far he had strayed from the arbitrary scale number society deemed ideal for his build, or rather the one he long longed for. He had never been able to bring his height and weight into balance, even as a boy. ‘ _It is baby-fat’_ his mother told him in middle school as she pinched his full cheeks. At thirty, he knew that it wasn’t and felt fairly confident that he had known the same at thirteen. When he returned to his flat that evening, he had a proper shit and after taking his hound out for hers, Ben stood half-naked in front of the bathroom mirror, decided that despite the short physical excursion he was still ever-so-slightly chubby and given his lifestyle likely always would be.

It didn’t matter. The blues and blacks he wore at work were slimming enough and it had been years since anyone, aside for perhaps his new constable, had wanted to see him naked. She would be over it within the week. Ben Tallmadge had no one to impress aside from the stills of suspects he had hanging in the corner of his living room. Given his lifestyle, that would likely always be the case.

 

* * *

 

When Caleb asked _‘Is that John Andre?_ ’ in reference to the attractive British-ex-pat beaming in an old police photo taken years prior after a drunk-driving accident and now fastened to his living room wall by double-sided tape and multiple post it notes, Ben knew better than to answer ‘ _Do you know him?_ ’ He knew this from the tens of texts he had since sent to Jordan, from the disciplinary report Yilmaz’s conversation with the DA had forced him to file. He knew this from the bylaws and he would soon have this knowledge reinforced by experience. DI Ben Tallmadge knew alone from common sense that he should not discuss this investigation with those outside of the Special Crime Unit.

But Caleb Brewster was in his apartment and Ben would entertain any fancy of fantasy if it meant he would stay and stay interested. Though the reality he had come to associate with and eventually recognize as himself existed somewhere in the darker parts of his mind where he had hidden all of his doubts, Ben could comfortably ignore its cries. Caleb Brewster was a drummer who had just played a sold out venue and decided that of the thousands of people screaming for a fraction of his affections, he wanted to go home with the man he found outside in the passenger’s seat of an illegally parked car who had not even made it through the sound check. Ben had been buried deep in Ferguson’s correspondence and the questions it raised for tomorrow’s manoeuvre when Caleb knocked on his window. On instinct he had reached into his back pocket, expecting city ordinance would excuse him a ticket at the sight of his badge. He was met instead by Caleb’s laughter, his smile and the creases left by joy in the corners of his dark eyes that filled them with light. ‘ _Can I take you home?_ ’ he had asked.

Ben took himself by surprise when he unlocked the door and offered his address to the beautiful stranger. ‘ _I work for the postal service_ ,’ Caleb informed him when he started to give directions. ‘ _I’ll find it in – shit what is the rate – three to five business days_ ,’ he teased, slapping Ben’s knee as he laughed at his own joke. ‘ _It is unmarked squad car,_ ’ Ben returned in reaction to the man’s physical warmth. ‘ _You can turn on the siren and go as fast as you want._ ’

At home, he was consumed by private dread. He had never invited a date back to his. He never invited anyone inside in any sense. The apartment stank as though he had figuratively been dead in it for five years. More exactly, it smelled as though he had abandoned his dog for fifteen hours and his rubbish bins since the last frost. Caleb told him he thought too much as he opened a window, inviting him to come out to his houseboat in Oyster Bay sometime. To spend the night. The weekend. And then he told him that he was a virgin. That he had never truly been fucked because he had never been fucked by him. Ben had never heard a more compelling and convincing argument. ‘ _You think too much,_ ’ Caleb told him again.

And he did.

Ben spent the next ten minutes hiding behind the bathroom door, trying to squeeze out of kakis that had not fit him any better when he bought them a little over a year before in a brazenness that only seemed to manifest in the three days between making a New Year’s resolution and falling short of self-expectation. He prayed Heidi’s excitement would distract Caleb enough from the fact that his apartment was littered with old take-away cartons and the cockroaches they likely attracted. He hoped his hound would help him ignore her scent, still stagnant in the room she had been kept in all day and in the old newspapers that covered its floors.

Caleb knocked.

Ben bit his bottom lip, certain he was about to be abandoned, all offers and invitations retracted.

Without waiting for an answer Ben was not about to give, Caleb entered, finding him with his kakis stuck halfway between his thighs and his waist, his face reddened from struggle and shame. ‘ _What’s this Benny-boy?_ ’ he laughed, winking. ‘ _You think I don’t enjoy a challenge?_ ’ He forced his hand down the back of Ben’s trousers and pulled him into a tight embrace which he then locked with his tongue. As wonderful as Caleb was just to speak to, Ben far preferred his mouth in this employment. Pleasure trickled and trembled down his spine as a full beard tickled his cheeks, chin and chest. Once Brewster had freed his cock from its cloth cage, Ben lost track of the rest of the garment. He remembered stepping out of them after he had finished, Caleb’s warm mouth and wet lips still around his sex long since he had swallowed his seed (‘ _delicious but_ _didn’t want to wear it in the whiskers_ ,’ he would later claim as he stroked and curled its ends.) He was beautiful, and Ben, who had been enamoured from the moment he first heard his voice over the line, was overcome with the desires he had long suppressed or otherwise denied himself. He watched Caleb fuck him over his sink in the mirror he had never know to contain anything but isolation – the blue bags under his eyes, the ‘baby-fat’ and the occasional blackheads he could charge as accomplices to what he now knew to have been loneliness. Now he saw Caleb. Hsaw himself with a lover and saw that for all of the differences he would begin to tally once the act was through, they were perfect.

‘ _Damn son. And here I thought your ass looked good in those pants_ ,’ Caleb panted as he squeezed and stoked the side of it between thrusts. ‘ _I am going to throw them out, donate them,_ ’ Ben said, half-screaming from the new pleasure he found in tightening his posterior in nervous reflex. Caleb moaned, telling him to stay like that if he could. Just like that. ‘ _You severely underestimate just how much of a neurotic mess I am,’_ Ben laughed _. ‘I can do this all day and night._ ’

All day and night was not needed. Caleb came shortly after he found himself restricted and asked to have a second go of it later. Ben answered with a kiss. He answered by quickly tidying up his apartment as best he could while getting Caleb a glass of water. He answered ‘ _Do you know him?_ ’ and in doing so, felt that his new lover was taking an interest in his life that had failed him for so long.

‘ _Only through work_ ,’ Caleb nodded. ‘ _Uh-side job at DeJong’s. Been workin’ there for ten years on an’ off. When I started, he used to come in all the time. Fucker._ ’

Ben questioned the expletive used presumably as a descriptive noun.

‘ _Nah, he ain’t the wosrt of ‘em. The ex-pats who call that place home now. Philomena – local fucking legend – was pouring there when I first started. I know André more from back then. Back I guess when this was taken_.’ Turning from the picture to Ben, he raised an eyebrow and asked, ‘ _Keep something to yourself?’_

_‘Sure.’_

‘So she is an actress, right? Famous now and that. Well Broadway-famous.’

‘ _I know her, or rather of her,_ ’ Ben answered. Philomena was not present on the home edition of his trace-interview-eliminate diagram. He knew what she looked like from Twitter and Times Square and wondered how much more famous someone from the world of theatre who had yet to be contracted for a Disney sound-track could possibly hope to be. Maybe one day she would voice a princess and have every girl in America from three to thirteen attempting to sing impossible areas after her, but for now she was just the wife of a witness and Ben was frowning, finding himself back at the office wondering if Braxton or Baker had found time to follow up with her.

_‘Not a fan of the Fiddler revival?’_

_‘No, not I’ve heard it excellent. It is not that._ ’

‘ _Sure it is. But Mena’s best work was before a … more limited audience_. ‘ _Bout a decade back she was priced out of her post-college flat and couldn’t go back home – nothing tragic, folks just went down to Florida when they hit an age when that stage of dementia starts to set in. So Mena, desperate and destitute, moved into to Robert Rogers’s halfway house, throwin’ on ah’ layer or five of stage make-up every time a caseworker came round, sellin’ herself as an addict. And it worked! For three years, she fooled the system into to payin’ her rent and share of utilities. Legend. Meanwhile my dumb ass is out here workin’ two jobs – three with the band, just tryin’ to keep gas in my tank so I can take my uncle to the doctor each week,_ ’ he said, still smiling.

‘ _John André gave her her second such gig – I guess when she got sick of cleanin’ up after the rest ah’ Rogers’s ‘boys’. Married her in a Green Card scheme and paid her to live in his penthouse. Hear she owns it now and is fixin’ to kick him out. Probably deserves it … Broke all our hearts when she left, it did. Business at the bar suffered too ‘til they hired Annie as a replacement. Crazy what we will all do to make rent though_. _But I probably don’t need to tell you that, palace you go here._ ’ Caleb knocked on the wall, causing a Post-It to fall. Caleb squinted to study it as he picked it up.

‘ _It is not normally this way, this messy I mean_ ,’ Ben lied, his cheeks flushing.

‘ _Relax Tallboy. This isn’t the dirtiest house I’ve ever been in by far. I mentioned Rogers’s place, right? Worse now that it is just him and half his construction crew, I’d reckon. Anyway,_ ’ he winked, ‘ _for that bathroom mirror alone I’m sure it’s worth whatever you’re payin’’_

_‘Four-thousand?’_

_‘Shit.’_

_‘Right?’_

_‘Roommate?’_

_‘I had one,_ ’ Ben answered. The question reminded him that while he knew a lot about Caleb Brewster from police records and public access radio, his lover knew little to nothing about him. No one did. No one else had ever asked. Ben took a deep breath. ‘ _I … was promoted not long after I lost him and it’s not a stretch financially anymore, but the place has not felt like home since.’_

The light amusement which he had come to assume over the course of the past hour was omnipresent in Caleb’s person evaporated that instant.

‘ _Oh. Bad break up?_ ’ he asked cautiously.

‘ _He died_.’

‘ _Shit. God, I’m sorry, I didn’t -_ ’

‘ _I volunteered it,_ ’ Ben excused him. He knew such talk was too heavy for a first date, if a night that had begun as a failed intelligence operation could even be classified as such. ‘ _It was … a long way back. Fuck, I’m sorry, I’ve never talked about this before and here I am telling the first guy I’ve slept with since. And I shouldn’t have said that either. I – I don’t get out much,_ ’ he stammered.

Caleb sighed as he put his arm around him, again offering his smile.

_‘You got a beer?’_

_‘I have some whiskey.’_

_‘That’ll work.’_

Ben told him about his life since he had ceased living it. He told him about Nate’s funeral, about his father gently telling him to move on, about the widow he had met in a bereavement group online, about how Sarah died three days after the first and last time they ever met with his DNA still inside of her, about how that had marked him as a public enemy and paradoxically had led to his promotion. He told Caleb about the problems he had at the office, about how the old quarter-coffee-automat was no longer producing a strong enough drink to help his team work around the clock, around the bureaucratic bullshit that ought to be charged as an accomplice when not a co-conspirator in the crime he was currently investigating. He told him about the crucifix half-buried in Sanchez’s tits, about how he hoped Yilmaz’s complete disregard for censored speech would lead her to some crass office-wide outing. He told him how he wished he still enjoyed the same kind of relationship with his parents that his men (and women) all had with theirs.

He told Caleb about his mother who had barely left her darkened bedroom since his brother Samuel died in a roadside accident. He told him of the shame he felt in front of his reverend father and whenever he looked at the symbol of his faith. Sometimes, he confessed, he saw the Cross and felt nothing at all.

‘ _I’ve never been much of one for organised religion myself,_ ’ Caleb said. _‘But take that how you will. Uncle Lewis always told me that you can’t believe in anything without questioning the validity of the doctrine. Maybe that is what you are working though.’_

_‘That was smart of him, of your uncle.’_

_‘Not the kind of shit they like to hear in public school though, that is for damn sure.’_

His grades had not been good enough for university, which said nothing to his intellect. From what he told him, Caleb had had a tumultuous childhood marked by instability and eventual abandonment. He had moved in with his uncle when he was fifteen, he said, after his parents kicked him out for the reasons that now found him cuddled up with Ben on his sofa.

‘ _Just to clarify, I was in a shitty garage band with Woody back then too,_ ’ he winked. Doubled over in laughter, Ben asked in absolute admiration how Caleb could be so cavalier on topics that would cause any lesser character to cry.

_‘I mean … truth is it is not as though I was ever wanting for nothing. Uncle Lewis and I are close, and I’ve Annie, Woody, Abby, Rob - I guess, when his Quaker ass feels like showing up, Jordan, John -’_

_‘Simcoe?’_ Ben interrupted. Caleb’s shoulders tensed as he brushed him of to pour them both another shot.

‘ _Fuck no!_ ’ he exclaimed. ‘ _I meant Wakefield’s low-key stoner ass. Guy is a successful physician – I’ve herd paediatrician and podiatrist both- but at least once a week he is up there at the orchard watching Wheel of Fortune with my uncle while they smoke out of an apple. Great guy. Can’t equate him with the people who have a common passport and first name. And between you and me, of the English Johns, Simcoe is the last and the least_.’

‘ _Oh?_ ’ Ben shuttered as he took a shot, hoping his awakened interest in Setauket’s weekend population was not transparent. If it was, Caleb neither commented or cared and Ben felt as if not more loved but this little indulgence than when Caleb stopped to kiss him, run his fingers through his loosened hair and wonder at how Ben could be so unaware of what he saw and called beauty.

‘ _Never got on with him_ ,’ Caleb elaborated after downing his own drink. ‘ _André started bringing him into DeJong’s … around four years ago? Don’t remember and would rather forget. I think the first time we ever talked he’d come in on his own – lookin’ for Annie no doubt – but as she had no mind to serve him, he bought a beer from me and in an attempt to make his presence less awkward asked if I could put on some soccer match. Told him the sport was for girls. He came out with some stats and suggested that maybe American women just needed to play against ‘real men’. Understanding why Annie felt so uncomfortable alone in a room with him, I told this fuck that I knew he was a math guy and all but he sure as hell did not want to talk numbers with me, if you catch my meaning. Shut him right up. He was more cordial to us after that. For a while, anyway.’_

_‘What happened?’_

_‘Hewlett.’_

_‘An enabler?’_ Ben tried.

‘ _Not exactly. Annie fell in love with him and we all – and by ‘we all’ I mean, you can ask anyone in Setauket and the surrounding towns – just thought Simcoe was jealous. I mean you probably already know this but turns out Hewlett tried to kill himself back in January and for a while, Simcoe was the only one who knew. It worked something weird in him, it did_.’

‘ _The going theory around the office is that the two were lovers._ ’

‘ _Simcoe and Hewlett?_ ’ Caleb gaped. _‘Pfft! You think you are closeted. John Graves is about as straight as they come. I can see it though,’_ he laughed _, ‘truth be told, in some strange way I can. Routine attempted amicicide not counting.’_

‘ _Amicicide?_ ’

‘ _The killing of a friend? Learned that one from ol’ Eddie. He is always adding drama with obscure nouns. Surprised it stumped you though, Mr Skull-and-Bones._ ’

‘ _It didn’t,_ ’ Ben defended, taken aback, deciding it best to wait to address Caleb’s assumption about his membership in Yale’s almost-secret-society until he knew if he was kidding or not. _‘I’m just wondering … has that ever happened in DeJong’s Tavern to your recollection?_ ’

‘ _I mean once during the beer-pong tournament last Halloween. Not since. Now they know that I am always ready to bring these guns to their bitch-ass little knife fights,_ ’ he said flexing his bare arms and kissing the muscles that protruded. Ben smiled and Caleb then kissed him, too.

‘ _Nah those two though … they mostly just talk calculus with one another – fucking calculus! Like these shits somehow landed the one subject of conversation capable of striking fear into the hearts of all the locals while making them sound even more like pompous fops than their dandy accents already do and just went with it. But Eddie is with Annie and um … word about town is that Simcoe has something going on with Mary. Mary Woodhull._ ’ Caleb became serious as he spoke her name. Without smiling, he filled Ben’s shot glass to the brim. None of this struck Ben as odd and insofar as he registered the shift, he did not try to reason it. Having exhausted the topics of his non-existent personal life, the detective inspector was left with nothing else of which to converse. Although he had considered the concept of ‘too-soon’ on and off throughout the evening, it no longer bothered him that he felt an emotional connection to the man beside him. Caleb was friendly. Caleb listened. It was more than he could say for most of the people whom he had known all his life.

‘ _We are trying to figure out what, to be honest,’_ he admitted, victim to forty-proof and pheromones. ‘ _I have heard a lot of witnesses to an affair I can’t find any physical evidence of – the defining characteristic of every bloody element in this case. Truthfully, I wonder sometimes if any of it happened._ ’

‘ _Abe has um … he has been down about it. For a while now I guess. Just drives around these days, listening to Springsteen, wallowing in his guilt. Personally I’m torn up about the whole affair,_ ’ Caleb said. For the first time that night Ben heard the sadness he expected to find in his lover’s other narratives – that he had come to look for in all stories told occupationally or otherwise. ‘ _On one hand, I get it. He married the wrong woman. And Mary … she deserves more form life than he will ever be able to give her – but the thought that she would seek some kind of sexual or emotional fulfilment in Simcoe just makes me ill. Man is an absolute creep. If you believe me on nothing else, believe that. He is a creep. And he is cruel._ ’

‘ _How so?_ ’ Ben asked, placing his hand lightly over Caleb’s clenched fist.

‘ _One time Simcoe is at the bar with some shot glass – sippin’ from it like he expected it to be hot or something,_ ’ he said with disgust. ‘ _I guess that is how they do it in Europe but he is the worst offender. I told him jokingly that he could just drink it, that we had more – and then this bastard pours the remainder out and tells me my rum taste like piss. Top shelf stuff! When I wiped it up with my bar towel, telling him to pay his tab and leave, he grabs my hand, squeezes and says that he wonders how long it will be before the palsy sets in. My uncle suffers from it, you see … so I told him I hoped there was something genetic about burning in an exploded Humvee. Simcoe releases my hand and as I am shaking it off says,_ ’ Caleb swallowed and spoke in a falsetto, ‘ _-That was a very rude thing to say- as though he expected an apology. I am not proud of taking that shot … but that – Jesus, that is what Simcoe brings out in everyone without cause or reason other than he is lonely or bored or both. Been worse lately … after Hewlett did, or tried to do whatever he thought he wanted to do to himself. Pills. I think. I know, I mean, I have heard it from everyone over the past few days. But it is still no excuse for Simcoe’s shit. At any rate, I hope Abe is wrong - I hope Mary isn’t bearing the brunt of whatever he is decidedly not working through._ ’

Ben nodded. They sat in silence for a time.

 _‘How can anyone be depressed while listening to Springsteen?_ ’ Ben wondered aloud, still thinking of Abe Woodhull through the light daze of liquor, unable to formulate a more exact question at this hour about Caleb’s bandmate and his broken marriage to the pretty redhead on his wall.

‘ _Have you ever really listened to his lyrics? How can anyone not?_ ’

Caleb proceeded to sing him a few verses of a song that he had not heard in at least five years.

‘ _You have a gorgeous voice_ ,’ Ben told him, now confused that he was used as backup vocals in a crap band whose ‘singer’ did little more than scream when he was not letting his base do it for him.

‘ _Yeah? Comes from living in an ugly town._ ’

 

* * *

 

The next Ben thought about Abraham Woodhull was at 10:07 the following morning, having mistaken Caleb’s mobile for his own.  Dreary and dreamy, he gazed into the blue glow as he tried to silence the device’s monosyllabic scream by opening the correlating messaging app. A text from Jordan allowed his blissful delirium a moment’s delay. His friend had accepted his apology - insincere as it had been. That, or purely in light of his other friendships, he saw that sometimes an unavoidable overlap occurred between one’s personal and professional lives. Ben felt forgiven. He felt as though they had not fought at all.

Delighted, he opened the message to read:

>> _Keys are under the mat if you_

_need a place to crash tonight._

_Place is empty. No utilities._

_But yours if you need it. In Albany._ <<

and, sent seconds later:

>> _Please tell Abby to call me next_

 _time you see her._ <<

Ben sighed. He had not been the intended recipient. Ready to put the phone down in search of his own, it buzzed again, and again, on reflex, Ben hit the button on the side of the screen to illuminate it one more.

This time Ben had no illusions of absolution. He saw that he had been wrong in an assumption the flickered across the top of Caleb’s lock screen, so ridiculous he had to read it twice. And so he did. He returned to the app he had just closed and saw that Abraham Woodhull, the college dropout who drove around his backwater asking himself if dreams were lies when they did not come true, had a far less melodic way of phrasing questions he had come upon on his own.

>> _He doesn’t know???_ <<

>> _How_ <<

>> _Did you find anything?_ <<

Caleb had responded earlier that same morning with a photograph of Ben’s taped up T.I.E. diagram, including close ups of a few Post-Its that had taken his interest. He remembered falling asleep on the couch. Caleb must have carried him into bed. He must have taken them afterwards.

It had all been planned, Ben realised.

It had all been fake.

Ben heard Caleb in his kitchen and swallowed a sob, a scream or both. “What are you still doing here?” he called out. He wanted him out of his house.

“Thought you might like some breakfast, Benny-boy,” Caleb chimed as he carried in a tray toppled high with eggs, toasted bread and breakfast-meats along with two cups of coffee. The way it was arranged, Ben thought, it seemed as though he head meant the meal for them both. He wanted him gone.

“No I mean, what are you still doing here. You got what you came for last night, didn’t you?”

Caleb looked genuinely confused by the accusation. “I … I mean shit, I know I came a little soon, but last night I … I thought we -”

“Last night never happened,” Ben insisted, anticipating a disciplinary action. It was over. It was better this way. “You and your friend Abe. You are so off,” he spat.

“Ben, no. It’s not-”

“It is Inspector Tallmadge,” he corrected. “Call your friend; tell him to meet you down at the Manhattan station. I can send a car and a uniformed officer if he is not fit to drive. While you are on the line, tell him to relax. Simcoe was, in fact, born in Pakistan – _excellent detective work there_ , but he is not a ‘secret Muslim’ whatever the fuck that means. If anything, he is the most godless man I have ever interviewed. But then I haven’t had the pleasure of you and Mr Woodhull in interrogation yet, so I suppose that remains to be seen.”

Caleb put the breakfast tray on Ben’s nightstand only to have the phone forced immediately upon him. “It woke me up. Unlike you, I didn’t mean to look,” Ben said. “Is Culper Ring’s guitarist involved in the little operation as well somehow?”

“No. Abe told me not to tell him. I don’t care about the case. I care about you. The only thing I asked you about – the only thing he wanted me to try and find out was if his wife was sleeping with Simcoe. And I just said that you didn’t know. That he should talk to her. Which is what I told him last night before the gig as well.”

“Well it looks like he found his own answers. Secret Muslims,” Ben scoffed, muttering to himself, “I can’t wait until this election year is over and the media stops giving Donald Trump so much unneeded attention.’ To Caleb, he said, “I hope you did not think I was kidding. Call your friend. I have a mind to charge you both with attempted obstruction of justice.”

Caleb, hesitant, began to dial. There was no answer, or so he said. Ben took the phone back to try his own luck when another text was sent from the same conspiracy theorist.

>> _Can’t talk. In the car with RR. Explain later._ <<

>> _Are you fit to drive, Woody?_ <<

>> _DI Tallmadge wants you to meet him at 1PP._

 _Offers to send an escort_. << Ben typed back.

>> _Hold him off. I have to talk to Anna. I think_

 _Hewlett is one of them, too._ <<

Ben began to write with his index finger that Hewlett was a Calvinist and that he –Abraham Woodhull - was living in a county founded on the principle of religious liberty, but something his reverend father had once commented about the particular protestant denomination to which the suspect belonged stopped Ben’s finger before it could wave the American flag over WhatsApp. He thought about the texts he had seen the day before, realising only in hindsight that they were coded. He could guess at what Simcoe was attempting to conceal (beyond his friend’s learning impairment.)

“I … I have to get to the office. I think I – I think I know what they are up to,” he whispered to himself, frozen in revelation.

“Simcoe and Mary?” Caleb asked, kneeling before where Ben sat on the side of his bed to meet his eyes.

“Simcoe and Hewlett,” Ben answered. “And they are going to tell me in about an hour to avoid assault and obstruction charges exactly what it is that Hamilton and his little Frenchmen have gotten us all into.”

DI Ben Tallmadge smiled in spite of himself. He texted Abe again, asking him to meet him at the station. If nothing else, he had him to thank for the few moments of joy they week had shown him. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Kick and Rush** is the English style of football. It is fairly physical and as I think of lame digs I can make about England and football in general … I am reminded that we are going into an international break this weekend. Sadness. At least I have a lot of good stuff to read. ;)
> 
>  **Misbaha** are Islamic prayer beads. Traditionally it is 99, mostly it is thirty-three, and you just can keep count when you praise Allah post-prayer. Fundamentalists don’t use these. A Christian rosary is similar.
> 
>  **Calculus** isn’t really that scary. It is the mathematics of motion. You would think given the branch has its modern origins in England the national side would be better at calculating the trajectory of a projectile … such as a ball … than they have always seemed to me to be, but then I am spoilt. Okay I got a lame dig in. I am mostly mad because I have had to revisit so many (specific, often dull) old games while writing this thing and other works in the series. But actually, for all the clues I threw out at you in this update, you want one more that will probably confuse you again? Here goes – I wouldn’t mention the Liverpool / Everton rivalry as often as I do if it were not of some importance. Something else? You don’t have to know anything beyond that it exists to start piecing parts of the UK side of the puzzle together. Ooooookay, moving on!
> 
>  **T.I.E. diagram** stands for trace-interrogate-eliminate, and it described one of those spreads you have seen on every cop-show you have ever seen.
> 
> And that is all I have for you. For a few days anyway. Comments and kudos _always_ encourage and inspire me, beyond which I just like keeping up with you guys. What are you all getting into this weekend? Trouble? Let’s hope.  <3  
> XOXO - Tav
> 
> Up Next: My Name is Red[coat]


	31. The Exit Strategy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The British Ambassador finds himself faced with a crisis of conscious as he weighs the wishes of a would-be ex-pat against the advice of his military attaché. Ben misplaces his faith and trust in Arnold’s kidnapper. Anna recalls the events leading to John’s attest on the road to Albany.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, lovely faces, it seems that we find ourselves (unexpectedly!) in the midst of what the fandom has dubbed ‘Simary December’. I AM THRILLED. I am also (sadly!) not able to participate in the festivities with _this_ update, deciding that an epic love story deserved its own chapter rather than forcing it in with some pretty shady political manoeuvring and um … sport. They appear! They are together! There is a _moment!_ … but it is short lived. That said I want to first take the time to recommend the works of these lovely authors if you need more of a fix: [ rapid_apathy ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rapid_apathy/pseuds/rapid_apathy/works%20), [ greenofallshades ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greenofallshades/works),[ ooWandering_Ghostoo ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/00Wandering_Ghost00/pseuds/00Wandering_Ghost00/works%20), [ Reinette_de_la_Saintonge ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Reinette_de_la_Saintonge/pseuds/Reinette_de_la_Saintonge/works), and [ Maryassassina ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Maryassassina/pseuds/Maryassassina/works). Go check them out! 
> 
> I want to come back as soon as possible to round out this arc, so hopefully I myself can join this great list of contributors before the year TURNs. Otherwise, Simary 2k18 anyone?
> 
> Okay, but back to now, we have a plot heavy chapter ahead of us (finally using a few of the scenes I first wrote in August … 2016!) so let’s do the thing.
> 
> Warnings include but are not limited to: Police brutality, sport injury, irresponsible press, political manoeuvring, sabre rattling, cartels, bad business, incompetent leadership, Europeans (ew, right? XP), race baiting, gambling, battle scars and amputations … and, as I am certain you have gleaned from the summary, there are a few additional historical appropriations you’ll met in this chapter, both in person and periphery. 
> 
> Still with me? Wonderful! Love you lots and I hope you enjoy!

He felt he owed him an explanation, but Detective Inspector Benjamin Tallmadge found that he could barely move his tongue. He sat on the edge of his bed, the same bed he had shared with the man the morning had reviled to be an enemy, paralyzed in his profound awareness that everything had been lost in a game he had not wanted to play. He felt the mattress shift under Caleb’s weight as his one-night stand sat down beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder while offering a kindness Ben barely registered, did not deserve and did not respond to.

Hat sat.

He stared.

He started to make a mental list of everything he now had to account for and accomplish before the day’s end. He had to contact his constable’s next of kin. He had to file a medical claim. He had to file an incident report. He had to open an internal investigation around the woman who had just rung him from the field. He had to delegate the Peggy Shippen press conference to Sergeant Yilmaz. He had to call Russo in on a Sunday. He had to call Ferguson back when he arrived at a reason as to why he had not heeded his Scottish counterpart’s warnings. To that end, he had to examine a decade old medical report against a recent series of x-rays. He might then have to explain to the ADA that he wanted to charge a suspect based on evidence from a case to which he should not have had access. Ben Tallmadge felt the burden of the information he bore.

He sat on the edge of his bed with the man he had nearly loved, the memory of the one he had lost and the reality that blurred every distinction between them: Ben, as DI Tallmadge, had to contact his constable’s next of kin to advise them that he had been injured in the line of duty.

“Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?” Caleb asked.

“I spend around one-hundred-twenty hours at work each week,” he stammered in response as he began to calculate in his head. “Three years Baker has worked for me … that’s … eighteen-thousand seven-hundred-twenty over twenty-four … nearly eight-hundred days by the clock in this man’s company and I have no idea if he is married, if he has children,  where his own folks live – if they are even alive. I have to ring his next of kin and recite … I have to tell them. I … have to tell my team. I failed them all. I’ve failed people I am not even sure exist, whose names I ought to know by heart,” Ben berated himself. Caleb Brewster put more pressure into the half-hug he was giving him. Ben felt as though the walls themselves were constricting. He heard himself choke, swallowing the pressure that wanted to escape his chest in the form of a sob.

He had to call Baker’s next of kin.

He had to continue the search for the senator while clandestinely redirecting his line of inquest so that he might stop a single incident from becoming serial.

With an officer injured on an unauthorised assignment, solving what he saw as the real mystery could prove more challenging that it had seemed when he had woken up that morning.  What the powers that be were hoping to gain by hiding evidence of where Arnold had been and what he had done prior to what Ben had been ready to write off as a bar fight was difficult to piece together without the support of the ADA and without the trust of his unit. Reasonably assured that his recent actions would fully deprive him of the latter and would see his federal and foreign aid become his active enemies made the task he had bestowed upon himself impossible by ordinary means.

Ben thought about the pictures his lover had taken last night, pictures that had ended the affair far sooner than he would have hoped. He looked up at Caleb and said in a solemn tone, “I think I failed you, too.” At this, he felt the tickle of Caleb’s beard over his eyes as the drummer’s lips lightly graced his forehead.

“Hey … Buddy, that’s not -”

“Caleb, I can’t … I can’t do this. I need to get some air - I need,” Ben said as he shook last night from his shoulders and stood. He took a deep breath and held it in as he considered every possible consequence of what he was prepared to ask. “I need you to call your friend Woodhull again. If he is still determined to engage in espionage … I have something that he can do that may help us both.”

 

* * *

 

It was slightly past noon on Sunday and Anna Strong found herself wishing that time was tactile as she watched the world blur from the passenger seat of a sedan packed full with most of her possessions. Her kneecaps hit the bottom of the glove box with every knot in the pavement, pushed forward as she was by the various bags and boxes crowding the boot and back. A glance at the car’s driver told her that he was faring no better, balancing the wheel between legs that helped him to steer, his prominent hand half-occupied with tapping the mobile phone on the dashboard - a dated app with dated maps that necessity had tasked with navigation. Anna turned back to the adumbration eighty-miles-per-hour reduced the road to, recognizing the familiar and filling the rest with the same anger that had followed her here from the field.

There was nothing special or especially scenic about this particular stretch of the I-90. It was patterned with orange cones and signs that spoke of workweek delays due to road works that had since long outlived their anticipated October twenty-fourteen completion. Sunday afternoon saw this section of motorway transformed into something of a museum, an open archaeological site where the faint remnants of decade old campaign promises existed as lane closures and plastic urinary facilities that towered behind the guardrail beside littered lunch bags, cigarette butts and machinery Anna could not hope to name. No one was around to repair the failing infrastructure, to hold a sign to oncoming traffic cautioning the crawl of vehicles to further decelerate – yet that was exactly what she wished for: For Edmund. For herself. For time. Anna wanted it all to stop.

She wished it were still morning, that her fiancé’s pleas to spend their last sunrise together entangled in his Egyptian cotton had not gone ignored. She wished that she had not insisted on playing in an association-league sporting fixture, clinging to the semblance of normalcy which she naïvely hoped to find in it.

Edmund had barely spoken since seeing his first-ever red-card in the eighty-seventh minute.

Thirty-five had since passed in the car, slower, Anna noted, than the lampposts and power lines seemed to at ten over the designated speed limit. The radio signal had given out when they had pulled onto the interstate and, rather than search for an alternative, Anna had pushed in an old CD which theretofore sat half-suspended within her stereo. Edmund said nothing, but made a face expressing that he held Alanis Morrissett in about as much regard as ever other man she had ever known. Anna sighed. Defeated, she turned the device off altogether. ‘ _I can’t control Simcoe_ ,’ Edmund confessed as silence then fought to settle. ‘ _You can’t blame him_ ,’ Anna returned. And wasn’t it ironic. Another roadside exhibit of how New York’s taxes were being spent flickered by, same as the last several. Same as the next dozen they would see on their weekend tour of gross government misappropriation. The broken road would lead them nowhere. Anna thought bitterly that she preferred the orange pallet of abandoned infrastructure to the one blue and blood which the state defined as ‘justice’.

Despite what was written on the overhead signs that almost matched the Google map her fiancé had open on his phone in the absence of an inbuilt GPS, he was not driving her to Albany. In his mind, he was already on his way downtown to the police station. That, Anna reasoned, or he was already there, talking to Tallmadge with refinery that he had not wasted on the referee-cum-arresting officer.

Perhaps, she thought, he was instead employing the same colourful language of which she had once thought him incapable in the war his mind seemed to wage. His fine lines deepened with his frown. Edmund seemed to be reliving the last moments of the massacre in silence. He seemed frightened, fragile and paradoxically ready for a fight.

Anna closed her eyes. Though she did not think of sport in terms of statistics the way her fiancé and his best friend were given to, she might have easily foreseen the end of the game. She might have cautioned the captain at half time to regain control of his baser instincts, save for the fact that she shared them. Up two-nil with a reserve squad and a new coach no one had initially put much faith in against a club they had never beaten, she had wanted to win as much as everyone else in the locker room. They had all been half-blinded to a series of questionable calls by their unprecedented success, unable - or simply unwilling - to calculate the potential costs. All, she realised now as she had then, except for Simcoe. Anna had quickly dismissed his detachment as the pride and professionalism that made him unequivocal on the pitch. Were only she able to see the match in those early moments as a mere manoeuvre in the larger game she and her friends had been playing all week, she cursed herself; she might well have been able to avert the inevitable.

She shifted her weight where she sat, the sport bag on her lap reminding her of Mary, who after demanding that she be taken along to see the man refusing to speak with her, had spent ten minutes that morning in the same packed car exchanging giggles about a ‘cross-country road-trip’ they had planned on taking their freshmen year and had indeed attempted over the winter break.  The girls had only gotten so far as the Jersey Turnpike before the ‘check engine’ light put the brakes on their adventure. ‘ _If I recall, we fit out whole dorm into the backseat,_ ’ Mary told Edmund. ‘ _Hopefully you both had your safety-belts on,_ ’ he replied, not bothering to disguise his displeasure at the addition they had picked up on the stairwell. ‘ _Setauket is crawling with coppers. What if we should be pulled over? I already have two unpaid tickets to my name and -_ ’

‘ _Oh, we could help out there_ ,’ Anna purred teasingly. To her friend, she pouted with extended lips, ‘ _Oh Mary, you’d kiss me were someone to knock on our window, right?_ ’

‘ _Oh Anna_ ,’ the smaller woman echoed from her lap, ‘ _We would be snogging already if I trusted it wouldn’t distract Eddy from the road._ ’

‘ _It would distract from you alibi,_ ’ Edmund murmured. Mary took this as an invitation press him for substantive details as to what happened when he saw John the day before.

Simcoe had yet to answer any of her attempts at correspondence. Anna assumed this was because he had plans to leave for England within a month - plans which presumably did not include the married woman he met at a crime scene and seduced on the cold trail that they had returned to find. Edmund had informed them curtly as was his manner when faced with fragile topics, that though his sometimes-friend had quite a lot to say, he could not bring himself to do so over text and that he was unable to call. Anna knew from experience that the captain did not like conversing from a distance – any distance - sensitivities around his voice compelling him to speak quietly while positioning himself close to the point of mutual discomfort. She had seen that morning that Mary was so desperate to contact her partner in crime that she could not give a care as to how Simcoe himself – or any of the sins she equated with his name – may sound.

Anna wondered to what extent Abe’s absence was playing in Mary’s appetence, unconcealed and half-crazed. He had not come home from his gig the night before. He had not called or sent her a text. ‘ _Why would he?_ ’ Mary had remarked distantly when Aberdeen came home in an Uber at slightly past two, confused that her employer’s vehicle, which had left the club before her, was not in the driveway. ‘ _Normally, he would just have given Robert Townsend – if that is even his real name – as an alibi. Having lost that lie in front of an audience of everyone, why bother inventing another?_ ’ Hearing this first hours later, Anna wished she had a fiction to offer. For Abe. And for John. But mostly for Mary, who needed reassurance in any form she could find it.

‘ _It is not my place to say_ ,’ Edmund said after some measure of deliberation when they pulled to a red light, ‘ _But I might do better to prepare the both of you for what you are about to discover. I - ah, I suppose there is no delicate way to put this, so it may be better to just be out with it. Simcoe is legally deaf_.’

‘ _What?_ ’ both women demanded in unison.

‘ _He has been since he was ten years old. There is ah – something, something psychosomatic to it. Whilst he retains partial hearing, it abandons him in heightened stress – such as the sort he has recently found himself subjected to, among other … more common triggers. Long car rides. Meetings with new clients … Me. Sometimes me,’_ he sighed. _‘It is ah … a most inconvenient defence mechanism developed in youth. I brought him yesterday to an otolaryngologist who believes that with hearing aids and therapy we might be able to salvage what remains but … um. Not to hold out too much hope._ ’

The explanation rendered them both soundless for the remained of the drive.

When they arrived at the field after an eternity that somehow seemed not long enough, they saw Simcoe’s enormous frame bent over a guardrail, it’s white paint chipping to reveal rust the colour of his hair, unbrushed and unbound, cascading down to broad shoulders hunched in a sulk. Already in full uniform - a scarlet red that clashed cruelly with his pale features - Simcoe watched as a few of his teammates practiced shooting.

Edmund was the first out of the car.

He and John exchanged a nod of acknowledgement as he passed by on his way inside the clubhouse to meet the refereeing staff along with Middle County FC’s coach to see out the arbitrary business football’s governing body insisted proceed each match even at this lowest of levels. Mary, after shaking the cramps from her legs, rushed to meet the captain where he stood, half turned and gazing in their direction. No. Not gazing. _Staring_. Staring as he always did. As Anna could no longer fault him for. She wondered why Edmund had not spoken sooner. How long he had known and why she had not when there were so many signs that now seemed obvious. She wondered why Simcoe never said anything to the subject, if he feared mercy or mockery. She wondered which he had known more of.

His expression was at once surprised and sorrowful when Mary embraced him. He softened as he returned her gesture, gently combing the long strawberry-blond hair of the petit woman in platform-heels with her tear-stained face buried in his chest. For a moment, Anna wished to join her in her sobs but she felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. ‘ _Not now_ ,’ she said, handing over an orange and a bottle of water and with it a return to what was sound.

Anna must have greeted her mother at that point, she reasoned. They must have spoken over some topic of little relevance or of great, but two hours later, all she could recall was that shortly after finishing her standard soccer-match breakfast, fate pulled into the car park in a Jeep Liberty driven by Robert Rogers. It parked directly next to her Accord.

Of all the people she suddenly wished not to see, Abe Woodhull sat in the passenger’s seat. He said something nonsensical about Pakistan, Senator Arnold, and the German chancellor who, insofar as Anna gathered from what seemed to be the preamble to a political rant reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh, was apparently to blame for America losing out in trade negotiations with the European Union. She glanced behind her to see Mary and John still locked in each other’s arms and eyes. ‘ _Mom_ ,’ she whispered with a slight nod in their direction, begging her to intrude on their euphoria before Abe noticed their nearness and equated it with infidelity. Whether Nancy Smith had seen her signal or not, it was too late. In the same breath in which he had shot down the ECB, Abe leapt from his wife’s vehicle shouting for Simcoe’s blood.

Robert Rogers laughed as he followed his lackey at a leisurely pace. He called to John Byrd who was engaged in a warm up exercise to run and tell Hewlett that John Robeson could not make it for reasons on which he did not elaborate, but which Anna could reasonably venture had to do with the liver he was in the slow process of rendering useless with cheap lager. Rogers shouted that had pulled Woodhull from a worksite to substitute, but assessing the situation as he saw now it, his boy might not make it to the locker room.

‘ _Ah’ve twenty on tae ging!_ ’ he cried out to the man now running to the clubhouse, his arm rising in an offensive gesture to all as others began shouting their own bets.

_‘S’okay,_ ’ Rogers explained, turning to the district attorney. ‘ _He’s part Native. We can gamble as long as we’re using ol’Johnny as a bookie_.’

_‘Do you not realise that that is offensive?_ ’ Anna sneered at the same time her mother wondered aloud, _‘Is everyone on this team named John?’_

_‘Nae, Pet. Mah nams Robert,’_ Rogers said, removing his dusty old cap with a slight bow and offering his arm.

_‘I’m … not interested,’_ Nancy returned in lieu of her name, which, Anna imagined, Rogers likely already knew from the amount of time he collectively spent at the police station, both bailing ‘his boys’ out and answering for his own petty crimes.

‘ _Swine_ ,’ Anna spat at him as she hurried to the crowed of players from both teams that had since swelled around Simcoe and the Woodhulls. In the twenty seconds it took her to sprint from the far side of the car park to the rusted rail separating the pavement from the grass, Abe had taken a swing and missed. Odds had been set at 10:3 in favour of Simcoe, and money was quickly changing hands (even though John Byrd was not present to ‘legitimise’ the exchange by value of the box he checked on a census form.) A Middle County man she would later learn was named Baker positioned himself between the combatants. Addressing them both by their respective surnames –something that would have immediately struck Anna as odd had she been calm enough to consider it - he proposed they shake hands, calling a truce until after the match.

To widespread disapproval, Simcoe offered his open palm. To cheers and jeers alike, Abe spat into it. Anna’s panic rose.

‘ _Satisfied?_ ’ Simcoe asked, wiping Abe’s saliva onto his shorts with a hinted smile.

‘ _No,_ ’ Abe answered, bending his knees slightly and pulling his clenched fists before his face. He bounced a bit, balancing his nerves in a way that reminded Anna of a common pigeon steadying its vision as it pecked about for food. He looked like a fool. Mary, frenzied, cursed his confidence and Anna, silently, found herself questioning the source of his conviction. Abraham Woodhull did not once look at the woman who wore his ring on her right-hand. It was as though for him this was not about his wife at all.

‘ _Have you ever been in a fight before, Mr. Woodhull?_ ’ Simcoe questioned calmly, electing to pace rather than mirror a pose his challenger seemed to imitate from an arcade game. ‘ _Because I have. Oh, I have. And though I have beaten many a foe, I should take particular pleasure in this petty skirmish,_ ’ he promised, the knuckles still raw from pummelling both Arnold and Edmund reddening further as he curled his long fingers into a fist.

‘ _JOHN NO!_ ’ Anna shouted. He did not hear her as he continued to barb and belittle. Of course he didn’t, she cursed herself. Needing to make her presence known, Anna joined Baker in occupying the dead zone.

‘ _John don’t do this_ ,’ she begged.

‘ _Anna, stay out of this!_ ’ Abe shouted. ‘ _This is about honour. This is about AMERICA! You’ve no right to-_ ’

‘ _Honour?_ ’ Anna gaped, ‘ _whose honour, pray tell? Certainly not Mary’s – whom you are both insulting by insisting with this – and not your own either! This is pride, Abraham! This is folly! It is juvenile and_ -’

‘ _Illegal_ ,’ her mother interjected from the side-line, breaking another group of would-be-gamblers apart with a tone normally reserved for the court room.

‘ _Mr. Woodhull_ ,’ Baker said again. Firmly, Anna noted, almost as a warning. In the moment, the two seemed to recognise each other. Abe relented. ‘ _Robert, find your own way home, yeah?’_ he said, still looking at Baker. ‘ _Let’s go Mary_.’

Mrs. Woodhull, however, shook her head. ‘ _It is not what you think, Abraham,’_ she said softly as she stepped closer to Anna and Simcoe with a reserve that bordered on reluctance.

‘ _Isn’t it?_ ’

She did not answer. When he left without further argument, she did not follow.

‘ _What have I done?_ ’ Mary whispered as she watched her tyres kick up dust and gravel while her husband sped away. ‘ _What you needed to,_ ’ Anna tried to assure her.

As Anna saw it, there was no other move her friend could have made. Mary’s alibi hinged on the idea that she had John had been together in a hotel room on the night in question. Denying it in front of the District Attorney, whether she was attached to the Arnold investigation or not, simply would not do. ‘ _I’ll talk to him_ ,’ Anna said of Abe, but upon hearing her offer Mary looked to John behind her. He too seemed injured be the reality that he must have recognised. Mary had not chosen his love. She had chosen her lie.

An argument broke out in the chorus if Simcoe winning the girl meant that he had won the brawl that had not been. They collectively asked Byrd in varied voices when he came with both gaffers and the referee to see what all of the commotion was over.

Anna glanced at Edmund from the passenger’s seat. She had heard the same insults swirl into conversation every time he had been its topic, but until that very morning she had never seen the substance of their sentiment. He was rather prissy, rather petty, and it had rather seemed to Anna that her fiancé’s extraordinary ability to compartmentalize might just as well have rendered him a victim of Simcoe’s ire.

As players demanded that he help settle a monetary dispute with his maths degree after Byrd’s repeated refusals, Edmund, in his second official act as Bye-Week’s interim manager, reached out to his still-stunned captain, grabbing for his shoulder and attention as he scolded him that without Woodhull they did not have a full eleven. On hearing Edmund’s outburst, Anna wondered how well she actually understood the English dialect over which the Queen claimed dominion. He could not truly be concerning himself with the managerial details of a match he himself had wanted to skip, not when the lie he perpetuated to spare his sometimes-friend from consequence had nearly escalated into Simcoe’s public pronouncement of his own savagery. Anna wondered how she had framed Edmund’s inconvenient authoritative tendencies before, and what other inadequacies of character proximity and phantasm had let her ignore. He knew what was going on between John, Mary and the man to whom she was married. Match or not, Anna had reasoned, he could have extended his friends the same sympathies he would have demanded for himself in advent of heartbreak. Instead, he redirected the discord against the man he needed to calm.

‘ _You have me_ ,’ Mary interrupted. ‘ _I’m_ a _Woodhull. I’ll play._ ’ Edmund Hewlett, the calculating and cold association league football manager, as opposed to Edmund Hewlett, the kind and charming man who had half-stumbled his way into her heart, looked at the small woman before him dressed in her Sunday’s best. ‘ _Ah, Mary, not disrespect meant but do you … do know how?’_ he seemed to chide. Anna had elbowed him in his bruised rib, not concerning herself with digression.

_‘No disrespect meant,’_ Mary countered _, ‘but it is soccer, Edmund. I’ll figure it out._ ’

She and John exchanged a long and longing glance as Nancy offered to see if she had packed Anna’s old cleats in with the rest of the shoes she had brought from Brooklyn. Neither seemed to hear her.

 

* * *

 

The game itself had started slow. Without Robeson, Hewlett could not employ his preferred formation, so rather than playing a back four, he spread his team three-five-three, using Mary as a centre forward and playing Anna to her left in a purely attacking role to which she was unaccustomed by practice.

Simcoe had gotten to keep his centre midfield position but spent the first quarter hour or so back passing whenever he took possession, likely, Anna assumed, his protective tendencies preventing him from playing the ball to Mary. Middle County, and particularly the same Baker who had helped break apart what would have otherwise been a brawl, were playing a hard, physical game. The referee seemed loath to book them for any fouls, of which by Anna’s later count of just her own bruises, were more than bountiful.

Twenty minutes in, frustrated by what he saw as his captain’s absence of commitment, Hewlett decided to take the game to ‘MCFC’ himself, charging up to midfield and countering for possession. Seeing that he was covered, he then passed the ball to her. Anna ran it up to the box and, finding herself cornered by three defenders, cried out to Mary as she kicked. Either she found the ball or it found her head, but the play resulted in the first goal of the game.

‘ _Hairspray_ ,’ Mary painted, half-surprised when Anna raced along with the rest of the hoard to lift her in celebration. ‘ _Anything will ricochet off a pound of plastic,_ ’ she laughed to one of the lads, winking, ‘ _that is why this is a girl’s sport_.’

Anna smiled. Like her form, Mary’s curls had (still) looked perfect.

The last-minute substitute scored her second goal on an assist from Maglev close to the half time whistle, this time with clear purpose and intention.

Anna’s pulse quickened as memory returned her to the joviality of the locker room at half-time.

Edmund, elated by the atmosphere of promised conquest, the compliments he was receiving for his role as player-manager and the inevitable comparison by the team’s Liverpool supporters between himself and King Kenny, had abandoned the air of caution he initially attempted to instil. He had begun his fifteen-minute window by telling his team in an accent heightened by emotion and absence of breath that he thought the referee had been purchased, but fell into the same spell of laughter they all had as Appleby interrupted, transforming the new gaffer’s speech into a parody of ‘Braveheart’.

The second half showed them that should have taken the weakened warning seriously.

MCFC returned to the pitch ready for war. Whether they had paid the referee or not, no calls or cards were pulled against them. Simcoe had seen yellow towards the end of the first half, arguing with the arbiter over a free kick awarded when a player for the opposition clearly exaggerated the extent of physical contact he had been shown. There was some luck in this. Angered, Simcoe played the back half with all of the speed and aggression he had supressed during the first.

There was some luck, too, in that Robeson had been left at home to nurse a hangover. Hewlett, in a surprising act of tactical ingenuity, had stacked the midfield. Knowing that his opponents would be keen to avoid an enraged John Graves, he barricaded both sides of the pitch with senior and seasoned members of the squad. Anna would have preferred to play the wing, but placing her beside Mary seemed to give the unanticipated striking talent a certain confidence.

Seventy-eight minutes in, Mary Woodhull scored a hat trick. The third goal, or rather, the kiss she blew a blushing Simcoe in celebration served to undermine her. It undid them all. 

For no reason at all insofar as Anna or anyone else could tell at the time, a whistle was blown shortly after the game restarted. The referee conferred something to Baker and a man named Miller who wore the captain’s band. Miller looked uncertain, Baker seemed uneasy. Anna noticed that her mother was not screaming abuses from the bleachers as she had for the past twenty-three years. That she had been strangely silent throughout the match. With her earlier fear for Abe, choler for Edmund, and elation over the goals against what had thus far been a clean sheet; multiple peculiarities had escaped Anna’s attention. The quick conference brought them to the forefront of her mind and she began to tally.

Baker had shown familiarity with both the names Simcoe and Woodhull.  The first did not come with much of a shock. John was the captain of the third-strongest side in the league. Abe, however, had never played soccer. While he was almost-famous in circles Baker did not look to be part of, Anna would have found it strange for an indie-punk fan to address the frontman of an unsigned outfit as ‘Mister’ in itself. And didn’t Abe call himself ‘Colpepper’ on stage?

Baker did not seem bound to a single position, fouled with the full force of his impressive frame, and apologised afterwards in what seemed to be earnest tones though he clearly acted with intent to injure. He was particularly hard on Hewlett and herself. He avoided Simcoe. His team seemed to avoid him when scanning for passing options.

Something, Anna now knew, was distinctly off.

She heard a scream. What followed was a deafening roar.

Mary Woodhull had scored an early header, seemingly on accident. She had since shot two beautiful goals, and though moments before she had seemed Akinbode’s natural successor as the side’s striker, the angle of her foot told Anna that her friend would never play soccer again. Baker had shattered her ankle when she briefly retook possession. Simcoe had seen enough. Within seconds he had the mysterious substitute on his back, challenging the by then unconscious Middle County substitute to fight someone his own size. Anna saw blood.

Simcoe was shown a different red altogether. The referee took a pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket along with a badge and the card Bye-Week’s captain was most used to. Ignoring the props, John tore off his armband and threw it at Maglev, calling for Wakefield as he lifted a shocked and shaking Mary from the grass. Anna followed them to the bench. Her mother informed them that an ambulance had already been called.

Before being forced into the back of a police car, Anna heard John tell Edmund in the same language and too-calm tone of two-thousand-eight ‘ _It was an accident_.’

Edmund said nothing in response. He himself had been carded for cursing at the undercover cop suddenly interested in the task of refereeing. What should have been a penalty shot for Bye-Week became one for MCFC, ending the game with a final score of 3:1.

Anna knew she had been lucky that her fiancé had not left the pitch with his hands bound behind his back as well; something - she gleaned from her mother’s post-match conduct - that had likely been Tallmadge’s intention.

 

* * *

 

“He didn’t try to kill Rostovtsev,” Edmund murmured, the vehicle vibrating with his voice as he drove over serrated cement. Anna was unsure if he was speaking to himself or to her, and if he meant for this to be reassuring. “He tried to stop Ellie from doing so, because that is what Ellie does. That is what she does and … and Ferguson knows it better than anyone. And now he is involved in the audit because of me. Because I tried to save John from my past sins. From my family. For my family. Instead I forced this whole -”

“Did you ever think that maybe, _just maybe_ , you are not the problem? That John’s conduct has _nothing_ to do with you whatsoever?” Anna snapped, unwilling to suffer an expression of ego while her mind circled a situation that demanded anything but. “You asked me a few days ago what I would have done were it my friends. And I thought … I thought – you know what, it is not important. What is is that I would have beaten the life out of Tallmadge’s man after what he did to Mary had John not gotten there first. And you would to. Deep down you know it. Not even your arrogance and evasive tendencies could cover -”

“You are right. I’m no leader,” he agreed. “I should have seen it sooner – with Simcoe. So much. I should have seen it sooner. I should …”

“You are a good leader, Edmund. A good leader and a great friend – I, I only,” she sighed. “He wasn’t in the wrong. He did what anyone would have done … he just. He acted without thinking.”

“I know. I mean to fix things.”

His sentiment would have been what she would have wanted to hear had it not sung of a stale refrain. “Haven’t you done enough?” Anna demanded. “Your organized everyone after the match. You kept things calmer than they otherwise would have been. Tallmadge can’t hold someone for a foul in a football game -”

“Baker has similar injuries to a soviet smuggle from a decade past. I might try to appeal to Lafayette -”

“Shut up, Edmund. Just shut up. This wasn’t your problem until you made it your problem and I am really worried you are going to make it worse.”

“This has been ‘my problem’ since I let my sanctimonious lord father convince me not to file a missing person’s report when I brought John into a safe house and left him for dead,” he snapped.

“Fine. Do whatever you think you have to do. But for the love of God stop acting like it is your sacred duty, like John is some waking nightmare born from your own incompetence because the way things look from where I stand his only real crime is constantly accepting the consequence for saving us all from our own worst selves. You didn’t make him what he is – or even what you seem to think he is. You couldn’t. Just … just stop.”

Edmund nodded, returning his full focus to the road. He was driving ten over the posted speed limit. They were going nowhere. Anna gazed out of her window and saw the same construction site she had seen what felt like fifty times in as many minutes. In her tinted pyro glass reflection, she saw clearly that all of her friends had known so much more of the world and its ragged edges than she so much as trusted herself to imagine before Wednesday morning. Mary Grant –now Mary Woodhull -was the product of severely underfunded foster care. Her husband Abe blamed himself for his brother’s death. Caleb Brewster had been kicked out of his home at fifteen for his ‘cursed affliction’ and had since taking up the task of caring for the elderly uncle who had taken him in, Lewis’ uncontrollable tremors serving the constant reminder that each day brought Caleb closer to paralysis. Abby Ingram had been tossed out at the same age, pregnant and forced to rely on her sudden political marketability to finance the survival of herself and her son. Peggy Shippen’s charmed life had shattered in an instant. She had been kicked out of her sorority for seductive messages the media said she had sent to a senator more than twice her age over a platform her father forbade her from using. Philomena Cheer escaped the destitution of college debt by signing her life away to the cruellest man Anna had ever known. Jordan Akinbode worked twice as hard as anyone she ever known for less than half of the credit his credentials alone should purchase. Aberdeen Declesias’ entire country had been destroyed in a storm. She had come to the land of promise only to find herself subjected to prejudice and systemic inequality.

And John Graves Simcoe?

John had watched both of his parents die. He had been locked in a van after a shoot-out. He had been locked in a cell when the same friend he had once again looked to for protection had gambled with his liberty in a crisis on conscious. He was still looking to Edmund Hewlett, hoping for some hero to emerge.

For this, her fiancé was at least half-accountable. Anna wondered what Edmund saw when he watched John repeating the cycle of violence they both faulted him for having begun. She wondered what he saw when he looked in the mirror. Young Edmund’s brilliance had rescued so many jobs and while destroying so many livelihoods. He had saved an empire he only later learned had been built on lies. Anna’s heart broke for them both. It broke for them all.

She tried to apologise for her undue outburst. Edmund did not respond.

Refreshing several apps and finding the same communicative void that had filled her soul with a similar frustration, she let the screen fade to black, showing her reflection, forcing her to further reflect. All four of her grandparents had retired as judges. Her parents were both prosperous in the same field and enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity and acclaim within their respective cities. She and her brother had both attended Ivy League universities, and her gamble to throw her privilege away on a pipe dream had found her engaged to literal prince, noble in both name and deed, and working for a prestigious law firm for a friend who’s prowess she admired and inspired to. What had she done to warrant such award when Senator Arnold’s simple presence in Setauket had destroyed the lives of so many people she loved?

“Maybe we should turn around,” she said. “Go to 1PP with everyone else from the team to give a character statement. Protest. Petition.”

“Have you heard anything?” Edmund asked.

Anna checked her phone to see if there had been news, but the thirty seconds since she closed WhatsApp telling herself not to worry had proven discouragingly silent. She checked her connection to be sure and was disappointed to find that her signal was still strong. Her mother had last written her twelve minutes ago advising that she had driven Mary Woodhull to an Urgent Care clinic, that neither of them had had any luck in reaching Mary’s husband, that she was needed down at the station and to please reach out if she had better luck. Anna returned a series of rather offensive emoji before telling her mother that she had better not leave her friend alone and uncared for. A lack of response told her that her efforts had been wasted. Abe had his phone off. As did Caleb. Aberdeen had no means of transportation. And Abigail was at the Manhattan station with Peggy Shippen, who apparently was still in town to give a press conference. Not that given her current status with her sorority sisters she had anywhere else to go.

Anna relayed all this to her fiancé. He nodded lightly, deliberating. “Tallmadge already has his hands full, I imagine,” he said after what seemed a long while, two miles as counted in streetlights.

“Umm.”

“Here, take my phone,” Edmund offered. Anna reached. “I have a contact saved under Elizabeth Gwillim – with a ‘G’, send her a text saying that the NYPD used excessive force against women and immigrants. A young mother who grew up in Section 8 housing is in an Urgent Care facility with a broken ankle, a man from Islamabad was arrested for trying to protect her from police brutality. She’ll –  ah, Effie’ll know I’m talking about Simcoe and alert her colleagues en masse. If Peggy Shippen to issue a statement as you say, likely half of the city’s reporters are at 1PP already. They will be able to do more collectively than you or I could hope to for the moment. I … I plan on heading there myself as soon as we’ve unpacked. Maybe we can arrive at a truce, Tallmadge and I.”

“Isn’t that the woman who made you a suspect in the first place?” Anna asked in hesitation.

“I did that to myself, though it had not been my intention. I just wanted to force a chain restaurant into pulling their offer on the property. It worked.”

“Was it worth it?”

“For you it always would be.”

“Edmund I am so sorry about what I said earlier, I -”

“It is fine. I am concerned as well.”

Anna sent the text she had been asked to write. They rode the rest of the way to the hotel in silence. Gwillim did not respond, nor did anyone on this side of the Atlantic whom she had texted from her own devise.

“What are you going to tell them?” Anna inquired when they pulled into the Hilton Garden’s car park a little more than an hour later.

“I’m torn. We will never repeat that result. If I protest, the game will need to be replayed and even if by the grace of god the league decides to drop all of the bookings we acquired – it is doubtful …”

“That is what you are worried about?”

“Haven’t I ‘already done too much’?”

“Edmund -”

“Your mother begged me before we left not to speak to the police about Simcoe,” he quipped.

“Of course she did,” Anna muttered.

Edmund rubbed his temples. “I … I have something that they want, or rather, something that I can easily get released to them, and I will offer that in exchange for John’s pardon.” He sounded solemn yet assured. “Tallmadge is looking for a deal. We know from his files that he wants to concentrate on André and his research, my medical records will bring that back into the focus of him and his unit. Press core or not, he wants to erase the morning as much as we do. His constable acted completely out of line and should he move to charge Simcoe with assaulting a police officer I am certain that there is no doubt in his mind that we will counter sue the force on Mary Woodhull’s behalf. Tallmadge’s career can’t take it. Even the stain of a public perception of police brutality by itself would end him. In light of his history with Ms. Livingston, he will agree to the trade. He has no choice but to.”

“One of my friends is in hospital. One is in jail. Edmund, the fact that you are unwilling to stoop to their level, even now speaks to your credit. You are a good and decent man-”

“But?”

“Why are you _always_ so quick to surrender yourself?”

“Quick?” he scoffed. “I would argue that this is rather long in coming.” He paused, continuing with regained patience, “Charles Cornwallis has only help his ambassadorship for the past six months or so. I am prepared to ring him requesting that he comply with the NYPD’s request for my complete medical transcripts, thereby alerting him that André, in cooperation with the Department of Defence, has subjected some fourteen crown subjects to unethical, and - perhaps you could advise me here – illegal research practices, putting at least my life at risk -”

“What if they are in on it?”

“The British Embassy?” he asked as though alone the notion were unthinkable.

“Edmund … think about it. Why else wouldn’t they have complied sooner on their own accord?”

“Because our sovereign has an interest in insuring that my illness remains a state secret. Her granddaughters, the princesses of York, could carry the same gene that nearly saw me undone, as I strongly suspect both of my sisters and my niece must. It would damage all of their marriage prospects. Not just theirs, the monarchy …” he trailed off.

“Edmund -”

“That is why my family isn’t speaking to us, you realise. Royal weddings are hard enough as it is to arrange. I – I know that my younger sister has been tied to Clan Campbell as of late, but with our coming nuptials that plan will likely suffer two years of delay. The press is not happy about it either. Ideally Gwillim and her colleagues would have us wed sometime in the summer, a way of showing Britain is strong after the Brexit referendum –regardless of how it should turn out- and what I imagine will be an embarrassing performance at the Euros have otherwise made us Europe’s joke. It is probably why she is not responding,” he muse quietly. “I would be very much surprised if she doesn’t still harbour feelings for Simcoe.”

Anna wondered to what extent their engagement hindered their chances at surviving unscathed. Edmund, stronger, refused to relent.

“Ah … no. No, Darling, none of that is to say that I have any regrets, only … that I trust Cornwallis to act. He won’t want the stain of negligence on his record and I expect that he will be discreet,” he paused, taking her by the hand. “And that will be the end of it. I promise. After I’ve played my hand in getting the Foreign Office involved on our behalf, I will offer my official abdication which should set things right with my immediate family and their closest allies.”

“Even if André’s research isn’t what your Embassy is trying to hide, I am still not sure what make you think that Cornwallis is going to risk breaking down relations over -”

“Attempted murder by a foreign government? I will have given him an advantage in any future negotiation than he would otherwise enjoy.”

Anna was silent for a long while. She could not believe that her confessions of love and the life she hoped to lead had entered into the realm of international politics. “I think you would have made a brilliant politician, Edmund.”

“I don’t think I am meant to take that as a compliment,” he tried to smile.

“I don’t think you should surrender your claim.”

“I don’t think you fully understand its implications.”

 

* * *

 

Ambassador Cornwallis never took tea in the afternoon unless he was entertaining company, and truth be told, on this particular Sunday he felt he might benefit significantly from something far stronger than Assam. Like Absinth. Or Arsenic. He had no mind to decide. He watched the young man the Foreign Office had sent as a military attaché, wondering how difficult it would have been for them to find someone who better understood the role he was meant to play as the boy dropped a cube of sugar into his cup, stirring it with the scar-ridden remains of his right hand. It was not the worst service injury Cornwallis had ever seen, but it was singular in the way in commanded his attention – his gaze neglecting the etiquette of his office. Banastre Tarleton had left his thumb and two forefingers in a plastic explosive in Bagdad along with his command of a battalion he had led to glory time and again, his wounds rendering him unfit for active duty. They had met first on Thursday, and by Saturday the ambassador had heard almost everything that could be said of the scar-tissue. Everything, that was, that could be relayed effervescently, which in turn told him most everything he felt he needed to know about Ban.

He had learned to do with his left that which his right would never again mange – write, shoot, hold a teacup as daintily and dandily as the nobles whose names he dropped into conversation with ease. He alternated between laughing at the tasks he found difficult and applying all of his mental energy to accomplish them on his own. ‘ _It is not pride_ ,’ he had told him the night before, again, feeling Cornwallis’s eyes resting uneasily where his digits once had been. It was a standard that had been set for him in his youth when one of his sisters had been born disabled. His parents, not wanting her to live a life of reliance had forced the same high standards on a daughter with Down’s syndrome as they had on her six siblings of able body and mind, allowing none of them to treat her as ‘different’. Ban had thus become almost oddly egalitarian until he wasn’t, until he was given an excuse pertaining to personal limitations. He extended himself the same quarter that he did to others, pushing beyond physical deficits, ignoring the role privilege played in helping him to overcome them. Cornwallis could not help but to stare.

Shaking involuntarily, Tarleton lifted the saucer with a smile that rarely vanished from his face. “You wanted to see me, Sir?”

“I just got off the phone with Francis Marion,” Cornwallis informed him. “He was finally able to locate ex-Major Najma Abboud.”

“Oh? Brilliant. Where was she then? Still unpacking?” he suggested with a hint of mockery.

“At Kroger,” the ambassador replied flatly, unable to share in his subordinate’s amusement.

“What is that?”

“A chain grocer.”

“Oh my. Well the feds certainly had their work cut out for them there,” he said brusquely, “What can you do though?”

“You can tell me what the hell that was about,” Cornwallis insisted.

He had been awoken that same morning by a police inspector in Scotland who had reason for concern. Evidently, before flying to the United States to attend a Homeland Security advisory summit which had not been cancelled when it became clear to the world that its chairman, Senator Arnold, was unlikely to be in attendance, Tarleton had confided in someone warranting merit that he planned to pin what the police were not yet treating as murder on a Muslim with a recent court martial. A reputation that had proceeded the arrogant young attaché into Cornwallis’ home gave enough weight to this claim that the ambassador found himself forced to place his guest under house arrest while the Pentagon moved to investigate. The former Major had been found after a six hour search when she used her credit card to buy two bottles of Gatorade, a rotisserie chicken and something called coleslaw for which Cornwallis had no point of reference. She was corned in the car part by a Marion-led SWAT team, shocked to find that anyone other than her mum would come on such an apocalyptic explanation as to why she had not answered her cell phone, which - much unlike herself - had died on the drive from New York to Norfolk. She had never heard the name Tarleton, and after being debriefed, consented to saying that she had never spent an hour in the back of a SWAT van behind a Kroger while her rotisserie chicken grew cold in her lap. The FBI sponsored her a replacement, billing the British Embassy $7.89 for the transaction. Charles Cornwallis was not amused.

“A ploy,” Tarleton said, taking a sip. Seeing that his host was not satisfied, he explained with an air of nonchalance, “I needed something from a colleague whom I happen to hold in great esteem and experience has instructed me that the easiest way to secure peace is to threaten force.”

“Do you care to expand?”

“What on?”

Cornwallis narrowed his gaze.

“It is this damned Hewlett audit and what it might mean for my city,” he sighed, some of his humour escaping as he exhaled. “There is some irony to it at every level, but Ellie is one of the most deeply moral people I have ever met. She doesn’t see herself that way, and I suppose of greater essence, doesn’t offer herself in any way at all, believing in vain and vanity that her role in society excuses her from being anything beyond an object of projection. She is her inheritance, her family’s money and lands and charitable pursuits and whatever it is that others are given to thinking of those things. In some sense, she may be right. Richard Ferguson, for one, hates her for all that she symbolises to him and I found it … rather imperative that his assumptions be corrected insofar as they ever possibly can. She has a hero complex. So does he and I would bet that teaming up to quote unquote ‘save’ an innocent woman from a perceived threat will bring them as close to friendship as they might ever dare come.”

“Are you hoping to profit from the inquiry into the Hewlett’s corporate finances?” Cornwallis inquired.

“Not nearly as much as I imagine that you are hoping not to be hurt by it,” he retorted. “But I wouldn’t worry. My _hopes_ , such as they are, are unlikely to pan out, so the economic stability I’ve ensured will have to serve as a consolation. Hewlett, I imagine, offered Ferguson some sort of pay-out in exchange for his intervention on Major Abboud’s behalf – imagining that I would honestly,” he paused. “My reputation is not undeserved, I admit. I employed it to manipulate her. Still hurts,” he sighed, “knowing that she truly views me in that light after all that we’ve shared.” Tarleton shook his head, recovering his smirk and composure for what it was. “But again,” he chirped, “there is nothing to be done for it. When you ring Ferguson back, let him know that Abboud is safe and thank him for alerting you to the problem, appealing to his own ridiculous sense of self. It will purchase the Hewletts enough time and grace to properly cover the events of Monday morning and I should very much doubt there is anything else for Fergs to find. The matter will be dismissed before it can begin to effect share prices. You’re welcome.”

He had been caught. Tarleton spoke lightly, deceptively unthreatening.

“Cheers,” the ambassador said, unsettled that Monday’s events had somehow found their way into tea and biscuits, increasingly certain that he was not long for his seat.

 

* * *

 

Everything that had gone wrong that week had been facilitated, if not initiated, by a stroke of his pen. His hand had been forced by decisions made by one government over the fate of another on the other side of the globe.

On Monday morning, Charles Cornwallis had a secret five AM meeting with the French Ambassador who advised him as ‘ _a curtesy_ ’ that General Bouchard had been given orders to end the nation’s involvement in a Malian civil war in the coming weeks. The ‘Ministre des Affaires étrangères et du Développement international’ could not, however, appropriate the funding required, according to Bouchard and the Legion he oversaw, to position the currently French-backed opposition force to hold their own without necessitating future involvement of the international community. NATO did not want to commit and African wars were a harder sell for individual member nations than Arab ones in the current political climate. Rochambeau pointed to an unmarked area in disputed territory on an otherwise detailed regional map, telling Cornwallis that he had a solution, but needed help.

Without having visited the continent, without having kept up with recent news concerning the conflict, without words to offer a distinction, Cornwallis knew precisely what he was looking at. The property in question was a sizable plantation owned and operated by a cartel his own government had long been in business with. ‘ _France can’t seize it with British soldiers garrisoned there for protection, but we could orchestrate a sale,_ ’ Rochambeau offered. ‘ _The opposition army could feed itself from the crop._ ’   

‘ _There is far less poppy there than you think,_ ’ Cornwallis told him honestly.

‘ _Or so you say._ ’

He had already said too much.

‘ _What exactly are you asking of me, Jean-Baptiste?_ ’

‘ _Hewlett refuses to play politics. Thinks of her land as a safe zone and funds a refugee camp in the same area_.’ Raising his eyebrows, he inquired slowly in soft tones, ‘ _What can the Foreign Office offer as incentive for her to change her mind?_ ’

Cornwallis bit his lip. ‘ _It depends, I suppose, on how much you can realistically pay. Essential social services are run from those profits_ ,’ he said, making first sure that they were off the record.

‘ _Three-five._ ’

‘ _That is laughable._ ’

‘ _How much do you think wars cost, Charles?_ ’

‘ _Are you threatening one?_ ’

He would not have needed to. Rochambeau pulled a manila folder from his briefcase. Cornwallis flipped through the first few pages of its contents, realizing that French intelligence had enough evidence against the British government to bring corruption and criminal charges in The Hague. He slid it back, repeating the figure he was given.

‘ _I am attempting to organise a sale and I recognise that you have a certain sway within your department. An ambassadorship in America is … well from what I understand of UK politics, your appointment was not exclusively merit-based_.’

Cornwallis felt and fell into the insult. ‘ _I can offer citizenship and passports for her women and war orphans, propose tax breaks that would help her charities absorb the cost of relocation. Three-five for the property. How much is it going to take to make the intelligence disappear?_ ’

Rochambeau gave a rare smile. The men in the quiet and cover of darkness conspired to fund an exit strategy outside of the public sphere. A strategy, which by the time he left, Cornwallis felt assured would work to everyone’s benefit.

He felt sure of the hand he had managed to win for himself until seemingly unrelated events conspired to compromise the whole of their situation.

The following evening, Senator Benedict Arnold went missing. The morning after Edmund Hewlett was arrested in connection to his disappearance and by that night, the suspect had confessed to having committed corporate fraud in his youth.

Thinking they were doing the Hewletts a favour, DI Richard Ferguson was put in charge of the audit following young Edmund’s claims by the logic that given the inspector’s history with the clan, any evidence he was able to uncover would be dismissed in court out of hand. What that Chamber of Commerce had no way knowing, however, was that Ferguson was coming at his investigation with the knowledge that nearly a decade prior, the continuity of the Foreign Legion had been put under threat in the case that effectively ended his career. Edmund Hewlett and John Graves Simcoe had both been suspects. Rochambeau had rung him in the middle of the night, offering a solution before Cornwallis had even been made aware that there was a problem.

‘ _My government, as well as your own, has long been aware of Edmund Hewlett’s, how do you say? Personal shortcomings. I have a man on the inside playing into them. From what I understand of the reports I have seen, he is best friends with Britain’s best banker, no?_ ’

 

* * *

 

“And do you consider him to be particularly violent in character?” Cornwallis inquired of Simcoe.

“I fear I would not be the best judge of that,” Tarleton said dismissively. The ambassador again found his eyes rudely fixed on the wound that seemed to contradict his statement. Ban Tarleton would never throw another punch. He may have learned to handle a handgun, but determination and denial aside; he would never again serve his country in the capacity he had spent his youth preparing for. It was not his service record that translated to his talent for coercion, but rather his circle of friends. He should not have known about Monday or Mali. He should not have known about the chamber’s choice of commissioner, a decade old case, or the details of a confession given under emotional duress. Cornwallis had to uncover what his subordinate knew of the two British nationals whose alleged proximity to the missing senator was causing the world to unravel. “Between the two then.”

“Between Hewlett and Simcoe – you are asking who is the more aggressive?” the attaché clarified. “Oh, tough call, that. Edmund and I didn’t overlap at school. From what I have come to understand of him, he sees himself as a child of the Renaissance. The heir apparent to the great minds who awakened Europe from centuries of slumber with their contributions to philosophy and natural science -”

“You say that mockingly. His post-graduate research has been instrumental in various high-profile projects overseen by NASA and our own ESA,” Cornwallis defended as though offering a challenge or correction.

“If I sound mocking as you accuse it is because I have met the man on various occasions. More ‘Machiavelli’ than ‘Galileo’ if we are to judge him by his own constraints. As to John,” he frowned, his lightness of language and tone not deepening to match his expression, “well … he considers himself something of a poet. Haughty. High-minded. Horrible interpersonal skills. But it is always the quiet ones, ‘innit?”

“It would appear so.”

DI Tallmadge had arrested John Graves Simcoe earlier that morning, Cornwallis told him. This caused Tarleton to drop the saucer he held in his crippled hand. The ambassador smiled in spite of himself. Whatever information the would-be war criminal was getting, it clearly was not coming from New York. Tarleton’s posture seemed to stiffen as Cornwallis went on to relay that Edmund Hewlett had called earlier that afternoon to request that his medical transcripts be released to the NYPD’s Special Crimes Unit.  

“You can’t,” the attaché gaped.

He had to. According to Hewlett, fourteen crown subjects had been part of a psychological study which had led to an attempted suicide. If Tallmadge wanted to help see that matter prosecuted, he was not about to become an obstacle in the inspector’s quest.

“You think you are in any position to say?” Cornwallis could not help but taunt. “Based on the events of this morning alone-”

“Sir,” Tarleton interrupted. “I am here primarily to advise the Senate Defence Committee which has evidently overseen the research of which you speak on how to package a bill that would set an international precedent Britain hopes to follow. Questions of ethics aside, my understanding is the Dandridge / André research will save lives … but then I have not seen it given that the man I was meant to meet with met an old mate of mine in a pub a few days prior to my arrival. According to Tallmadge, at any rate.

Washington is already working the conservative sector for support. A wounded veteran back to battle the evil forces of Planned Parenthood? Truly an American hero,” he rolled his eyes before continuing in an earnest Cornwallis had not considered him capable. “Arnold’s disappearance is an easy sell as is to legislators looking over their shoulder for the next Nine-Eleven. Liberals are harder. But here,” he said, taking out his phone. “I received this text earlier from Effie Gwillim who forwarded it to me from none other than your dearly misguided Edmund Hewlett. I had no idea what to make of it until now.”

Cornwallis read aloud:

>> _The NYPD used excessive force against women and immigrants. A young Sec. 8 woman is in an Urgent Care facility with a broken ankle, a man from Islamabad has been arrested for trying to protect her from police brutality._ <<

Followed shortly by:

>> _Run tell that ???_ <<

“She makes a call,” Tarleton continued, “the story will circle the world in an hour. Being that this operation was apparently related to the Arnold investigation, what better way to sell the use of spy drones than a demand to have checks on police? It is the current mood.”

Cornwallis nodded slowly. “When does your commission end, Ban?”

“June, Sir. What do you ask?”

“You might make a run for public office. I believe you to have a talent for this sort of thing.”

“I have many talents, Sir. None of which are possible to campaign from.”

“Make the call,” he said, hoping God and history would judge him under the constructs of his time.

“Sir, as long as I am on the phone, with regard to Edmund Hewlett’s request – I think we should look into this matter. Gather evidence regarding the Dandridge / André research. And wait. Threaten to expose it when it would be most politically disastrous for the Americans or most advantageous to us. You’ll never know when you’ll need the upper,” he paused where Cornwallis’ eyes invariably fell. “hand. In the meantime, I want to forward what evidence you do have – whatever of relevance his file contains - to some friends back home. Help sort a hostage situation before it is allowed to escalate. My mate, you see … he is expecting his first son-”

So that was what the boy was after. “Washington has ordered Hamilton to keep Eugene Hewlett in custody. Everything both Rochambeau and I have put forth on his behalf -”

“How has diplomacy alone served either of you thus far?” Tarleton demanded.

Poorly, Cornwallis thought. There had not been ample time to prepare. Both ambassadors assumed that Ellie Hewlett would launder the sum she received ‘as a donation to her charity’, breaking it up into smaller figures before using it to finance whatever public works project she hoped would help absolve her of continuing the sins of her forefathers. The amount entered into her available balance an hour before Edmund’s confession warranted an audit.

She called her twin, a junior CFO working in the power company’s Paris office, asking him to make funds disappear quickly, understanding that if discovered her own nation would face as much risk as the one Bouchard hoped to liberate by cultivating the crop his government had secured the purchase of. Eugene saw a quick fix in the property his brother had brought into the press’s focus. John Graves Simcoe had arranged the sale of a flat in his building between the youngest Hewlett and a Russian oligarch.  

The prince had just enough sense to see that his time was up.

Eugene Hewlett sent an email to a columnist called Marat at French BuzzFeed with whom he had a colourful history explaining that his wife was about to give birth to another man’s son before getting on a plane. Having explained what he likely anticipated as being a lengthy public absence to the press, he found FBI agents waiting to arrest him in Copenhagen as he surely knew they would be. Cornwallis did not know if it was to his benefit or detriment that Eugene had no idea what his father-in-law was engaged in in Africa. That he did not know the man he had just intrusted his unborn son’s handsome trust fund to was working with his brother to help stabilize the common currency and strengthen the pound. That not even Simcoe and Hewlett were aware of their current role in world diplomacy and trade. Hamilton, however, suspected something was amiss with the man Rochambeau had assigned to carry out the mission, born form the opportunity he saw hours before Tallmadge named both Hewlett and Simcoe as suspects in the disappearance that turned the world upside down. He relayed all of this to Tarleton, asking, “Can you fix it without making a mess of things?”

“Not alone,” he answered.

“Then make the call.”

 

* * *

 

At eight o’clock that evening, Cornwallis proposed a toast. Having refused to release the records, Edmund Hewlett was still at the police station providing a statement on behalf of the man public pressure had forced the release of hours before. Tarleton’s plan to ask the press to intervene had worked a wonder. Various support marches of Senator Arnold’s controversial bill were already taking place in various cities. More were planned for the coming days from both ends of the polarized political factions.

“Washington plans on going up to New York early in the week to put this all to rest,” the ambassador repeated what he had been told over the phone. “He will have a word with Hamilton regarding his unit’s treatment of Eugene whist he was in their custody.”

“Glad it all worked out,” Ban smiled as he took a sip.

Cornwallis was quick to refill his glass, eager to learn what exactly ‘it all’ entailed. (‘ _Lose lips sink ships,’_ Tarleton had told him earlier. ‘ _In vino veritas, then_ ,’ Cornwallis had thought to himself.)

“To well laid plans!” Their glasses clinked. “To you!” “To you!” “To Étienne Hewlett!” “May his proud parents soon be reunited!” “To Gwillim!” “To Rochambeau!” “To Washington!”

“George Washington,” Tarleton repeated, without taking a sip. “Since I have been here, I swear, it seems as though I am stuck in another age altogether.”

“The nomenclature?” the ambassador mused, “I think that Americans are typically named for Founding Fathers, Biblical figures, or …” he paused, reflecting on the types of magazines his wife and daughter stocked in the water closet as one tends to with a proper drink in hand and several weighing on the mind, “the odd curious noun now again. ‘North’. ‘Apple.’”

“I’ll never understand it,” Tarleton said lightly. “But who am I to judge? My brothers and I were all named after footballers from the Dixie Dean era – Clayton for the whole winning squad.”

Charles Cornwallis’ understanding of the national game only went as far as his diplomatic status demanded. Every four years he ‘supported’ England’s attempt at glory by watching them flounder through the group stage of the World Cup. When they were handed their inevitable early exit he spent the next three weeks or so hoping that some country Great Britain had never been at war with would win the tournament, which never seemed to be the case. He did not concern himself with the Euros. They had beaten all of the neighbours centuries before on true fields of contention.

Having only the vaguest of notions as to what Tarleton spoke of, he squinted, trying to remember if he had another point of reference for his subordinate’s odd and rather old-fashioned Christian name. Inebriated and arriving at nothing, he simply nodded as Ban continued, “That is what I mean though, about being stuck in another time. The way the Yanks talk about footy, you would think we were in the eighties and hooliganism was a legitimate public concern. Do you know, DI Tallmadge actually asked me about that when I spoke to him this morning,” his smirk expanded into a sardonic smile. “I got to recycle my favourite joke from God knows how long ago.”

“Let’s hear it then,” Cornwallis said, hoping against every construct of logic his military attaché was in the practice of forcing him to constantly revaluate that this example of what the cripple considered humour would not escalate into another international incident.

“I told Tallmadge that last night I was woken up by a noise I could not quite identify. From my window I saw two thugs sporting Man United kits and to my horror I discovered they were playing football with a cat. I yelled at them to stop but naturally I was ignored. I had half a mind to ring the police,” he paused as he came to the punch line, “until I realised that the cat was actually up two-nil.”

Cornwallis returned his laughter out of relief. “It gets better!” Tarleton assured him, “Tallmadge had no idea what to make of it. He asked me, and I promise I am not making this up, if that was something akin to dog fighting. I said maybe in Turkey, forgetting, or course, how piss poor Americans are at geography. So now I suppose poor John Graves was subjected to some interrogation about animal cruelty because the good inspector has never seen a map of the near east, much less an Istanbul derby,” he smiled darkly.

“I assumed you were friends with Simcoe.”

“I hazard to imagine ol’ Johnny suffers under the same delusions. Worry not, Your Excellency, his newfound importance to the empire has not escaped me. If I may though … I would advise that in the future you and your esteemed colleagues take more caution in determining where to place your trust.”

“Would you care to expand?”

“It is not entirely my story to tell.”

“A girl?” Cornwallis tried.

“Isn’t it always?” Tarleton mused. His shoulders fell, speaking of some defeat.  “It isn’t what you think though,” he stared cheerlessly. “Around nine years ago, a friend of mine … my best friend, chose to confide something to him that has now become a matter of public concern. I only found out about it a few months ago, and I’ve –truly I have worked to excuse it as age, or trauma, or any idea that came to my mind which might explain why he did what he did in that moment and his actions in all of these years since. But I can’t,” he said, placing his tumbler on the table and pouring himself another shot. “If he couldn’t handle it – and how could he have? - he could have gone to an adult for help. He could have expressed his condolences – anything, _anything_ besides using the details of a family tragedy to explain all the reasons why he personally _hates_ Edmund Hewlett.”

Of all of the things Cornwallis wished he had been prepared for before the week began, this was chief among them. He sat down. Tarleton followed him out of etiquette.

“We as an international community are trusting him to work with someone he hates enough that he would put other lives at risk to further this fight?” he asked, closing his eyes.

“Seems so,” came his answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … at least Najma and Eugene made it out of their respective crucibles, right? I am DYING for your comments, but first, here are mine:
> 
> **The German Chancellor** : Angela Merkel, in March 2016. Her party (CDU) won the recent election but has yet for form a government.
> 
> **Rush Limbaugh** : A conservative American radio talk-show host. He also sells colourful ties.
> 
> **ECB** : The European Central Bank, located in Frankfurt, Germany. It is the central bank for the Euro and issues monetary policy to the 19 member states. Mostly, it exists as a buzzword and in this role stars as one of the primary villains in the popular apocalyptic-comedy known in Europe as ‘the nightly news.’ 
> 
> **The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act** : a controversial 1988 law protecting and promoting gaming as a source of revenue for Native American tribes. 
> 
> **King Kenny** : Scottish forward Kenny Dalglish served a role as **player-manager** for Liverpool FC from 1985-1991. This just means that he simultaneously held both playing and coaching duties.
> 
> **Hat trick** : when a played scores three goals in a single match. A **perfect hat trick** (everywhere but Germany) is when a player scores with their left foot, right foot and head. In Germany (which isn’t remotely relevant to this chapter or fic, just its writer and half the audience) it means that a player score three times consecutively in a single half, without anyone else scoring in between these goals.
> 
> **Clean Sheet** : in which one team prevents the other team from scoring any points. This term isn’t exclusive to football and is interchangeable with the American **shutout**.
> 
> **Cornwallis** : Best remembered for surrendering to combined American and French forces after the **Battle of Yorktown** , he was an officer and colonial administrator. Related, on at least one occasion he mitigated between **Tarleton** and **Simcoe** in their historical roles as green-wearing redcoats who found cooperation … difficult. 
> 
> **Francis Marion** : nicknamed “The Swamp Fox” (by Ban Tarleton), he was an American officer known for guerrilla tactics and intelligence gathering.
> 
> **The Hague** : Here, used synonymously with the **International Court of Justice** , the primary judicial branch of the UN which settles disputes between states, among other things.
> 
> **Planned Parenthood** : a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States. Mostly, it exists as a buzzword and in this role stars as one of the primary villains in the popular apocalyptic-comedy known in the US as ‘the nightly news.’
> 
> **Marat** : A radical journalist in revolutionary France. 
> 
> **Dixie Dean** : played for Everton ninety years ago, or when they were last ‘good’.
> 
> The old joke Tarleton tells about Manchester United dates back to the **David Moyes** era. Why? Because as someone pointed out when I once had a tumblr, I habitually make references to players (and trainers) who transfer to the club (often from Everton, as is the case here.) That said, I have an amendment or, rather update for you regarding a note in a previous chapter. The last time **Wayne Rooney** came up he was still at Man U. He has been back in Toffee Blue since that start of the 2017/18 season. Looking ahead, I think his penalty that resulted in the equalizer at the Merseyside Derby like a week ago would be a good place to begin _Hide and Sequel_ (mostly so I can get a few jokes about Everton’s 2017/18 season out of the way right up front. That or I have developed a certain fondness for Tarleton, who will (sadly?) never be reunited with his 2002/3 away jersey.)
> 
> And now that I have made us all a little dumber by filling my notes with the sort of history you would have to be two pints in to appreciate, I will take my leave, wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a good slide into the next year provide that we don’t see each other between now and then. Cheers!
> 
> Up Next: Fluff and pain killers (… and Peggy!)


	32. The Partisans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary, injured, comes to accept the unlikely structure in which her ideals substantiate. Simcoe entertains a criminal charge. Peggy and Aberdeen struggle to keep things civil under their newly shared roof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s good, lovely faces? Did you all have a happy holiday season? I really do hope so. Mine (if you were wondering) was about as merry as that of a highly secular Muslim forced to stare down Bockwurst and potato salad while a Helene Fischer TV special played happily in the background possibly could be - optimistic, but taking umbrage with the ambiance. Ladies and gentlemen, let me lay some truth on you about the culinary delicacy that is a cheap canned sausage sold soaking in its own juices: they are delicious, or can be, when you are at the pub, three pints in before half time and it hits you that you’ve not eaten all day. Order one. Go for it. But really, only then. I just have the idea from imported film that a cooked bird should be involved somehow in other sorts of festivities.
> 
> With that mind-set (… of missing the Bundesliga) I ended up writing a lot of Hide and Seek over the holiday break. I kept this update at a reasonable length (I hope!) but there will be more coming all too soon, oooh. Look out. I have nothing but transfer rumours to otherwise amuse me in the dead of winter. ;) That said, this week’s warnings include: young love, psychological manipulating, real-world politics, steadfast Trump supporters, occupy types and Arsène Wenger. 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy!

There was a difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’ and though she spent a goodly amount of time trying to instil her kindergartener with this understanding, Mary Woodhull, who had so long gone without satisfying the semblance of either, found their meanings flip Sunday evening at her kitchen table. She did not just want John to say, she positively needed him to. Just a coffee longer. Just a coffee and another package of the Oreos her tragic hero had sent in replace of words the day before. She could not stand the idea of being left alone with the rest of their company. However, John Easton looked all too eager to retreat into Harlem where he hung his keys at night. Mary, with a slight pout, reached again for the canister between them. Easton looked upon her with pity and without objection let her refill his cup a seventh time.

He had picked her up hours ago at an Urgent Care facility and had driven her to 1PP to give a statement with regard to how she came upon her broken ankle. By that time, a lawyer had already been called, a countersuit filed and five of the thirty or so witness testimonies had been given. All there was for Mary to do was wait and be waited upon. She found it surprising that her erstwhile teammates and apologetic opponents offered her without exception every comfort that could be created in the lobby of a police station. Someone in a red tracksuit surrendered their chair to her, another to the only cast she had ever worn. They made a pillow for her foot from a pile of hoodies and sweatshirts. They lent her a power bank for her phone and offered to hunt and hurt her husband if he did not soon answer his. They brought her the finest refreshments the vending machine could offer: a bottle of Coke, a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, a bag of unsalted pretzels (“ _in case you are on a diet”_ ) and a packaged cake ( _“in case you aren’t.”_ ) They rubbed her shoulders and decorated her hot pink bandage with their numbers, signatures and well wishes. Though in short order ‘John’ was written everywhere on her lower right leg, the one who had left his mark on his heart was nowhere to be seen. The minutes ticked into hours and with every turn of the clock Mary’s anger faded further towards apprehension.

When called into interrogation, she countered every question the officer asked with one of her own: _“Why has John Graves Simcoe been arrested?” “What grounds do you have to hold him?” “Has bail been set?”_

 _“Are you a lawyer, Mrs. Woodhull?”_ the uninformed, overworked constable asked as Mary struggled with her crutches back out into the lobby. _“No,”_ she responded. But I should be, she reasoned.

She carried this thought or let it carry her back to Setauket - again, in the back of Easton’s cab. He refused payment for what amounted to half a day’s work, telling her as he helped her up the stairs to the front porch to just worry about getting well so she could come back and save their season. With that, they said goodbye. An hour later, Easton had returned with her purse, phone, and a young woman named Peggy Shippen.

“ _I can’t thank you enough for taking me in,_ ” Peggy had said, smiling and squeezing her hands in a sisterly fashion rather than shaking them. In this act of instant warmth, Mary immediately shared her au pair’s stated mistrust. She knew who she was from the news; she knew she did not belong in New York from her greeting. Misanthropy was a geographic phenomenon. It was established in everyone upon arrival, regardless of from where they came. Peggy Shippen was either trying to deceive the other residents of Whitehall or she was trying to deceive herself – regardless, Mary saw disunion.

“ _It is a pleasure to have you!_ ” she spoke the same lie to the girl she was still half-surprised to find herself quartering. “ _Easton, won’t you come in? I’ll put a fresh pot of coffee on._ ”

There had been a message on her answering machine when she walked in an hour ere; a friend of Richard Woodhull’s had a daughter who needed a place to stay in the area – did he still have rooms for lease? A call from her father-in-law followed on the land line: Peggy Shippen was to be given his master chamber for the duration of her stay. Mary, barely able to stand, had order Aberdeen to go upstairs and change the sheets. The au pair protested, saying that she could not believe that it took hours of careful planning to cajole the chief judge into letting Abigail and Cicero rooms at short notice, but a white girl could just call and get him to give up his own bed. It was injustice! It was another example of institutionalized racism! It was a number of French words Mary supposed could be summarized as belonging to the ‘pardon my’ persuasion, but battle-worn and broken, she had no mind for translations or transgressions. She asked Aberdeen again to get the room ready, and to bring her one of Anna’s LSAT study guides and a legal pad from Richard’s office.

They sat together in the kitchen for the remainder of their wait, Aberdeen playing with her phone, Mary glazing over the material she would be tested on should she sit the exam that would let her apply for law school, as had recently been encouraged in a roundabout way by both her partner in crime, the DA’s daughter and a police constable. She found she could not read, however, her head rattled with estimations and calculations of the unreal sort that exist between desperation and dreams that have been lost to time. She was nearly thirty. She had a career, a mortgage, and a marriage, and yet, something inside her whispered that she had a reason to leave. What she heard, she could not see. Reason had never been good to her, and now it was gone.

They had lost the corpse, and John had lost control.

Mary flipped a page in her book and her mind turned over the morning. Simcoe had come to her defence far too quickly. He had come down on her assailant far too hard and now he was in jail for it. And why should this surprise her? They had met by her driving Anna’s car into a man he had knocked out with a single punch. Two days later, he had beaten his best friend past the point of recognition to give his bloodied hands an alibi an hour in a motel did not provide. He had strangled her during sex hours after. Mary could still feel him fucking her over her mahogany desk while her son and husband watch from the wall, a hundred African orphans who never existed looked on from her monitor, and a cartel boss peaked through the open page of an internal UNICEF magazine that painted her as a philanthropist. She felt all of their eyes still. Mary felt John Graves Simcoe when she squeezed her thighs together, this despite the pain in her ankle and the drugs that we meant to sort it. She felt his strength when he lifted her against the tree where they shared their first kiss, when he lifted her off the field where they had shared their last. It was all too much.

She was helplessly and hopelessly in love with a killer.

A ‘killer’, she thought, whose only real crime was believing that she was worth more than the sum of what fate in the form of stale beer at a frat party had bestowed. She had a career, a mortgage and a marriage. She had the stability years of foster care had caused her to crave. She felt beneath it, even still. Woodhull was not her name; it was her husband’s. It was his father’s. It was the reason that even if she refinanced or took out a loan she could never take her leave. From sophomore year until Thursday night, Mary Woodhull had had no friends. She had not known love and hope had been made a distant memory. What Mary did have, however, was her son Thomas. She had Abe’s threat that the courts would take him from her should she ever file for separation.

What Mary had was a fear that she was already gone.

Abe had not answered him phone since his close encounter with John in the car park of the soccer field. This was not to say anything; Abe had stopped answering her calls somewhere in the second year of their marriage. This time it felt different. It felt final. It felt as though she had been the one to hang up. She wanted to call him, not because she cared where he was or for what lies he might tell her, but because she wanted to begin peace negotiations. She could no longer fight for him. She had surrendered that by standing mutely behind Simcoe when the two had nearly slogged it out.

Eventually, Mary told herself, things would be fine between herself and her husband.  They had to be because they had never been and yet they had lasted this long despite it. He would come home late tonight or early tomorrow, smelling of cigarettes and sulphur and whatever medal job he had been working recently that allowed him the illusion of having participated in the economy. He would accuse her again in the same manner she had so often accused him, and Mary, in turn, would pretend to herself that she was not in love with the man her alibi forced her to pretend to be having an affair with.

Eventually, Tallmadge would find Arnold with whomever had kidnapped him after she and John had fled the scene. Eventually, her lies could end and the truth would fade with them. Eventually, the Hewletts would move out of Whitehall. She would see Anna now and again and they would partake in the kinds of pleasures which men were quick to avoid. Assuming Edmund had no particular interest in the sort of chic-lit transformed by the passing centuries into classics, any connection to John would eventually be lost. She would not ask for news of him when Edmund would come over to pick up his eventual offspring, whom Mary would offer to babysit without motive. She would not mention John’s name to Anna when they were five pages and half a bottle of German Riesling into discussing ‘Persuasion’. She would, instead, clandestinely search for news of John online over a secured work connection until, eventually, she wouldn’t.

Eventually, she would see him in passing at DeJong’s or at a party, standing or sulking in a darkened corner. He would lift his glass in a wordless greeting, she would smile, nod, and slide back into the crowd of other guests, hoping that there was a Mrs Simcoe among them, hoping that they would never meet face to face, hoping that John had gone on to live the life she wanted but could not bear to wish for.

Because in the end, Woodhull was not her last name.

It was a chain she had once worn with dignity and would learn to again. For all of Anna’s slightly dated LSAT material, Mary had no other options. With this thought, she closed her book.  No, she corrected herself. The book. It was not ‘hers’ and she would have no further use for it.

“Are you feeling unwell?” Aberdeen asked. “Should I get you another aspirin?”

“I’m fine … I should call Abraham. Again,” Mary answered, if only to assure her friend by keeping up appearances. “Do you know where I left my purse?”

After fifteen minutes of failed reconnaissance, Mary rung Easton at the number he had written on her cast, leaving a message to ask him to hold it for her until she could pick it up tomorrow at his garage. She then called, Abe, or rather tried to. Again there was no answer, but for once Mary found she was relieved. His anger afforded her more time more with hypotheticals, beloved in the risk that things might not work out as foreseen. Eventually would come, but eventually could wait. Mary closed her eyes and felt her pulse quicken while she moistened at the memory of the man she worried for, the man she worried she would come to miss.

“Should I put a coffee on?” Aberdeen offered. “It could be a while.”

“That would be lovely, thank you,” Mary answered, awakened form a daydream far too soon.

The device gargled and spat as the scent of the bitter beverage it was brewing filled the room. Aberdeen remained fixed on her phone, giving occasional updates, opinions and commentary. A protest had broken out at the Peggy Shippen press conference to the au pair’s unconcealed delight. Liberal media was enraged that a Muslim immigrant had been arrested for trying to protect a young mother from an out-of-line police constable. That had become the story though the lead was a lie. Aberdeen showed Mary a few pictures taken at the station that could have belonged to any demonstration save for the few faces she recognised from the locker room.

“Who is Wenger?” she asked of the only sign she could clearly read.

“Copper, probably. They are all corrupt. And everyone – even Robert Townsend!- is a corrupt cop,” Aberdeen pouted. “You should ring Senator Adams and tell ‘im to vote yes on Arnold’s defence bill. It would use drones to monitor the police. Can you believe it that they attacked and put in ‘ospital two innocent mums in the same day?” the enlightened au pair asked almost rhetorically, adding, “I don’t even know why I am surprised! You should make a statement, too! I think more people would listen to someone from your position of privilege. Wenger Out!” Aberdeen echoed John Appleton’s written sentiment.

Mary frowned. What meaning did ‘privilege’ hold for a prisoner, she asked herself. “I think Arnold’s bill takes far too much liberty with the Patriot Act,” she said. Nothing would come from confessing that she would flee her gilded cage if she thought a joint-custody agreement could ever be reached.

“Euh …” Aberdeen squinted.

“After Nine-Eleven we – the American people – surrendered a number of our freedoms in favour of security and surveillance,” Mary tried to explain.

“Clearly not enough!” Aberdeen countered. “Look at the Black Community; we are constantly made to suffer such random acts of violence as you were victim to this morning. I am afraid to go out now with all of these cop cars around Setauket. I think, without such protest as is made down at the station, they would arrest me. Maybe they do so still. Nearly everyone ‘ere is an old white man, and all of these cops will one day be old white men and they do not like to apply the law to people they can see themselves in. Look what they did to your leg! And why? Because you are a woman! Inequality affects you too! We need more surveillance as a security measure against those meant to keep us safe.”

It was not a random act, Mary thought to herself. John Graves Simcoe had been the target; she had just taken the hit, as it were. But he was in jail and as unjust as it was, the people of New York were instead up in arms about a place called Pakistan where it happened that Osama bin Laden had been captured and killed. By the time the nightly news aired, this connection, which had yet to be made by the people evoking the First Amendment, would help those elements of the conservative agenda people like Aberdeen and her like-minded allies had not claimed as their rallying cause. It was theatre. They were all fighting each other in the streets for the right to claim victory for a piece of legislation everyone on Capitol Hill had wanted to distance themselves from mere days ago. John Graves had been made both cornerstone and casualty.

Simcoe, Mary thought, and perhaps this girl Shippen – whom Aberdeen, distracted by the protests that had taken the attention away from the statement the former governor’s daughter had been forced to give,  had forgotten about until the senator’s supposed lover until showed up on their doorstep, asking for her bags to be brought up to her bed chamber.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were the help,” Peggy tried to apologise.

“’The ‘elp?’” Aberdeen spat. “Excusez-moi? I know you are from the south but we ‘ave ‘ere the twenty-first century. Try again?”

“She is my au pair, and my friend,” Mary explained, “And she is about to make us another pot of coffee. John, won’t you join us?” she asked after the man who with a scowl had taken Peggy’s luggage up the flight of stairs. The bags landed on the floor with a thud that echoed throughout the house.

 

* * *

 

Two hours later, Mary decided that Easton was best described as dour. He looked older than he was. His humour was dry when detectable, his conversation wanting, and yet he stayed with Mary, her coffee, her packaged snack biscuits and the partisans fighting over DACA with more fervour than Mary knew from her husband’s pension for C-SPAN ever found its way to the senate floor.

Easton did not attend his watch with the sort of insincere openness in which Peggy seemed to deal. Though English by birth and blood, was a New Yorker of the highest order. He did not smile. He stayed. This in itself was more than Mary could say for most people who had circled in and around her life, and for this simple act of integrity she had come to adore him. Her father had been a name on a birth-certificate left unsigned, her mother had left her for the sorts of pleasures that could only be found in a syringe and the State that then took her had left her at a different address ever six months or so for the next twelve years. Nancy Smith had left her in Urgent Care, telling her she really needn’t give a statement to police in her condition. Her husband had not left her a voice message or sent a text. But Simcoe and all those that he captained stayed with and to her. Mary did not know what she had done to deserve such support.

“It is getting late. I should be going,” Easton said, “thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Woodhull.”

“Please, Mary is fine,” she tried to laugh. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay for another cup? It is such a long drive back into the city.”

Hearing her desperation, no doubt, he again relented.

“It is normal, isn’t it?” Easton asked when she thanked him for hanging out with her while longer.

Normal, Mary thought. Maybe it was.

“Any sod would stick around to enjoy a wide selection of biscuits with an injured teammate and two poli-sci students,” the driver teased.

“Are you poli-sci?” Peggy perked up as she continued to address Aberdeen, “I was under the impression that you were literature given the amount of fiction that so freely flows from your lips.”

“Undeclared,” Aberdeen answered honestly. “But -”

“Oh they don’t have majors at community college, do they?” the blonde seemed to mock.

“Does it matter significantly what one reads and where?” Easton interjected. “I attended Saïd and I am no better off for it. My business has taken such a hit from an app of all places that I’m forced to drive a godforsaken cab myself.”

“You were at Oxford?” Peggy blinked. “That is rather impressive.”

“Rather?” Mary snorted, instantly cursing herself for engaging in a cold conflict.

“I’m sure it is nothing compared with Penn State,” Aberdeen said, empowered by the support she had just been shown. “Oh la la, the admissions process must ‘ave been tedious for you. Say Peggy, on that same note, what is it like to get kicked out of an institution with a library bearing your father’s name?”

“Aberdeen! That is quite enough!”

“Oh it is quite alright, Mrs. Woodhull. I’m fine with correcting misconceptions,” Peggy smiled. It was chilling, but for the first time it seemed genuine. “I may have been born ‘Shippen’, but ‘summa cum laude’ comes from the kind of hard work you are evidently want to classify as ‘privilege’ because it is easier to assume that ‘the system’ is a bigger obstacle to people like you than you are to yourselves. But go on railing about how unjust the world is, Miss Declesias. I am sure you think the fight for ‘justice’ you came on by way of social media is a far better use of your time than pursuing an educational background that would allow you to enact the changes you scream for in any meaningful way possibly could be … And maybe you are right there,” she added with a slight lift of her small shoulders.

Aberdeen shook her head. “I can’t get a student loan -”

“You could get someone to co-sign,” Peggy suggested lightly.

“You offering?”

“Are you so easily bought?” she laughed. “You are clearly passionate. If you are interested, I’ll help you find scholarships and loan sponsors -”

“So you can add to your white saviour narrative?” Aberdeen interrupted.

Peggy threw her arms up in a frustration that Mary felt herself. Burying her face for a brief second in the palms of her hands, she exhaled. Her sigh sounded like a banished scream.

“Do you see –even just a little – what I mean about how you stand in your own way? Tell me, what about the way I look or the way I vote makes you so quick to write me off as heinous? How is it that you think liberals have a monopoly on human compassion?” Peggy catechized, continuing, “By the way, The Daily Mail, rather than some two-bit left-wing outlet, was the first to make police brutality a headline.”

Mary wanted to answer for Aberdeen, ‘ _it is because she has lived under the same roof as Judge Woodhull for the past two years_ ,’ but she felt such sentiment was left better unspoken. It did not serve her interests to add to either arsenal.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her au pair pull another iPhone out of her Channel clutch, half wondering how someone who made fourteen dollars an hour could afford such luxury, half hoping to never catch her in the act.

“The Daily Mail?” Aberdeen challenged. “Oh,” she elongated, looking at her mobile device.

“See?” Peggy smiled coolly.

“Oh, I ‘ave to read the whole of this out loud,” Aberdeen returned. “ _At-real-Mary-Robs – My, my, you ‘ave me there. I suppose it was way when I was a teen, when your fans were_ – and she puts a picture from some children in school uniforms, ‘ _instead of’_ – and then she linked an ISIS propaganda video from YouTube. And that is in response to ‘ _at-Daily-Mail, do you ‘ave nothing better to do? When is the last time you got some? You are far too dry to be riding me like this_ ,’” she paused, “Quality reporting, that.”

“Honestly is Twitter the only place you get your news?” the former governor’s daughter narrowed her gaze. “Go to the main site. There is a link in the description.”

“Jealous that ‘ _hashtag–je-suis-effie’_ took you out of the public eye?”

Peggy started tapping at her own phone, which did little in support of her protest of this assessment.

“I’m scrolling this thread to save you the trouble,” Aberdeen countered. “About an ‘our ago The Daily Mail retweeted a picture some singer posted of herself in a scarf –and only a scarf – and then posted a bunch of images of the same lady in various other scarves next to someone very ugly who makes the same, asking ‘ _At-real-Mary-Robs, been a while. Are you campaigning for the Turkish presidency now?_ ’ which escalated quickly. Also from Daily Mail a few minutes later, ‘ _Apparently there is a Fatwa against me now. This says more that I could in 140 characters about Erdogan’s policies and proposals [1]_ ’ ‘ _and Mary Robinson’s fan base. Is this really how you wanted to rebrand, at-Real-Mary-Robs?[2]_ ’ And then ‘ _If all of my followers aren’t all out on the streets with ‘Je Suis Effie’ posters come tomorrow, I’ll ‘ave lost ‘ope in Britain_.’ – which Marine Le Pen immediately retweeted, ‘ilariously ...  though … predictably. I don’t see anything about police brutality, but I’ve never ‘it ‘follow’ on a posh bitch so fast. Thanks for the tip, Miss Shippen.”

“Here!” Peggy held up her phone, displaying the mobile news site. “Get your news from a genuine source before you -”

“Are we accepting The Daily Mail as a genuine source now?” Easton scoffed. Mary suddenly wished she had not forced another cup of coffee upon him. Seeing the story on Peggy’s device, he smiled for the first time, asking, “Is that on the main page?”

“Yes,” Peggy answered, exasperated.

“Brilliant. I have to text the lads; tell Appleton his Wenger protest finally made it into the British national conscious and conversation.”

“Who is this Wenger?” Peggy asked as she scrolled through the comment thread that had expanded tenfold since she first read the main article.

“An aging, incompetent despot who refuses to step down from power,” Easton answer dryly.

“Ee must be done away with,” Aberdeen said, self-assured in her assessment, challenging Peggy to take the opposite stance.

“He is the manager at Arsenal,” Easton shrugged. “I have my doubts that my Sunderland will even be in the Prem come next season. Wouldn’t care either way about the Gunner’s gaffer, but it is nice for John Appleton to get a moral victory out of all of this nonsense.”

“You aren’t taking it seriously then? With Simcoe?” Mary inquired.

“We did all we could, joined in the protest against police brutality until we learned no one on either side cared about the facts. Then we just had a bit of fun with it while we waited. Oh – what do you know … speak of the devil,” he said as he started texting again. Seconds later, Mary’s phone buzzed.

 

* * *

 

She shared something with everyone at Whitehall. Unaware of their own doings, they in turn shared everything with her. This, Peggy thought, would hardly prove challenging.

John Easton, the taxi driver who had brought her from her press statement to her temporary quarters must have had succumb to a similarly bad experience with an elite university. Suspended in her final semester and privately shaken by feelings of abandonment and fears for a future that seemed so assured a week before when she had greeted her New York based friends at Penn Station with a bottle of champagne, the ways in which Peggy related to Easton were hardly a bond on which to build a lasting friendship. As much as she hoped that the brave face she put on would never resemble his brusque, anger at or over an institution was enough to engage anyone in extended conversation. This, she consoled herself, might well prove beneficial.

The Hattian au pair was of her age, and not unlike herself, kindled her inner fire rather than supress her embers under the pretence of politeness. While it was evident to Peggy that they lived with vastly different truths, shooting down each of one another’s arguments with the single word ‘source’, the former governor’s daughter found their ongoing debate intriguing if not enlightening. She took some comfort, too, in the ire of her opposite. Aberdeen’s hatred was systemic. She was either too angry about Mitch McConnell’s proposition to defund a government subsidy from which she did not herself benefit, or too honest to placate Peggy with friendly overtones of the kind the girls at school long had.

Her sorority sisters had all sent her texts over the past three days, ‘ _I’m so sorry this is happening to you._ ’ or ‘ _It is so unfair!_ ’ or, her personal favourite, ‘ _I’m so sad!_ _The house just won’t be the same without you_.’ The vote to kick her out had been unanimous. Peggy had not replied to a single whisper of regret. Aberdeen was at least sincere, which proved a surprisingly welcome change.

And then there was Mary, a liar like her. A porcelain doll with a political surname and an English lover who was something of an open secret. They both knew each other exclusively through media coverage. To the left, Peggy was a seductress who was sleeping with Senator Arnold to further her ambitions, whereas Mary was a young mother who had grown up in Section 8 housing and had become though a sports injury this year’s Sarah Livingston. To the right, Peggy was Governor Shippen’s youngest daughter, a bright, upstanding young conservative made victim to liberal bloodlust; Mary, the daughter-in-law of the state’s chief justice, a charity worker with a warm heart.

The truth, Peggy thought, likely lied somewhere in between where no one thought to look.

How either of them wound up Tallmadge’s suspects seemed a socialist conspiracy, but it did not excite her imagination half as much as the smile Mary wore whenever she glanced her mobile. She was in love, and aside from coffee and cookies, that was all she seemed to offer freely. Peggy longed for the same privilege.

“They ‘ad ice cream together,” the au pair said of the man texting her boss in an at once alluring and insufferable accent.

“Aberdeen, that is not a universal euphemism,” Mary whispered. “Nor is it proper conversation for the dinner table.”

“But we are eating Oreo’s,” Aberdeen countered, expecting that substance defined setting or altered etiquette.

“Mr. Simcoe is bring us something more substantial.” She turned to Peggy and explained that her financial advisor was the captain of the soccer team she, Mr. Easton, Mr. Hewlett, and Miss Strong all played for. Pointing to her cast, she added, “He just doesn’t want me on my foot after today’s match.”

“Is that a code for something as well?” Peggy smiled. Easton suppressed another laugh. “Text Simcoe he doesn’t need to bring me anything, I’ll be on my way out soon.”

“Tell me all about this Sin-coe,” Peggy pleaded. “What was the ice cream like? A Sundae?” Mary blushed, which said enough. “A Thursday afternoon, in the office,” she confessed after a moment’s deliberation, “Hard and hot.”

“I’m melting,” Peggy fanned herself with her hand, giggling the way she would have with one of her former Alpha Delta Pi sisters. Aberdeen gave her a queer look and then they shared a grin. This, Peggy thought, was going to be easier than she had initially anticipated.

She had spent the better part of the past four days cuddled up in her suite in Trump Tower with the disgraced former boss of her childhood best friend. John André was gorgeous and intellectually stimulating, a scientist by profession and an artist by nature. He had teased her with his flute until she opened herself to the whole of his orchestra, singing his name as a chorus in octanes both deeper and higher than she had ever reached in glee. They had made plans to travel the world together in its entirety; plans, which he assured her, would prove possible once his research was put into public policy and practice.

But André’s pretty promises were to be preceded by a piteous immuration.

He would be gone from here by Monday morning.

He was gone to her already.

Peggy still counted the minutes until his departure, until his return. He was gone, but he would come back. For her, surely, he would come back. She had a plan to ensure this eventuality happened with appropriate haste.

“Do you eat shellfish?” Mary Woodhull asked, unaware that her fingers were moving in alignment with Peggy’s private ambition.

“Um, sure,” she babbled, imagining herself again entwined in André’s soft embrace. 

“You are not allergic or anything?”

“No, no,” Peggy assured her.

“He just never misses an opportunity,” Easton muttered.

“For what?” Aberdeen and Peggy asked in simulation.

“John, um, that is, Mr. Simcoe … he and Mr. Hewlett have this long-running inside joke,” Mary started.

“They have a proud tradition of aggravated assault,” Easton simplified. Mary went pale. She forced a sound pretending at a giggle. “I’ll take it if it means he is bringing us lobster. I was going to have Aberdeen make Hamburger Helper tonight so … lucky us,” she smiled.

“I’ve never had Hamburger Helper,” Peggy said, surprised the dish so much as existed in the vocabulary of an elegant individual with ambitions made apparent in the law-school study-guide with a Columbia bookmark open beside her.

“And you call yourself American,” Aberdeen scoffed.

“I have a US Passport, yes,” she returned with the sort of smile worn as a taunt. “Tell me more about this … rivalry,” she asked of Easton.

“It is not nearly as interesting as the two make it out to be. Simcoe calls Hewlett ‘Oyster’ because he is rather posh and pedantic, and the one time it might have served him to take his best friend’s paranoia seriously, Simcoe wound up with food poisoning and wanted to wrestle a victory out of a clear and decisive defeat.”

“So he is bring us food he can’t eat?” she tried.

“No … he can, he just ate them –the literal oysters - off season. It is not worth it to ask him about it. Don’t bring up the horse either.”

“Gotcha,” Peggy winked as she searched her mind for credible context.

 

* * *

 

She had gone to a concert with André the night before. They had not stayed to see the first act. The venue was of the kind of where no one would think to look for either of them, as all of the spots André sought seemed to be. Their affair was a secret. It was necessity. He was married and she was being linked by the mainstream media to a man she had met once at fourteen. But all this would end, and not just for the promises of a primary candidate made via Twitter at five in the morning.

This would end, because Philomena Cheer was every bit as mad as her husband had diagnosed.

He would leave her as he had promised when first her name had been spoken between them on Thursday afternoon. He would leave her; surely, he would leave her. The story about Peggy’s own text-based affair would be outed as a hoax, and she and John André would be together. Openly. Happily. For ever after and forevermore.

She would have written their love story in blood if need be, but in asking her not to leave town, DI Benjamin Tallmadge had provided Peggy with a perfect solution in the form of what he named ‘standard precaution.’

Between their shared moans, André had shared with her that for the past several years, he had been working alongside Dr Martha Dandridge on a project that would help the psychological community understand how to control the only human emotion that doubled as instinct. Arnold and the advisory committee he headed were backers of the study, and, when his bill passed, would be the primary beneficiaries of its yield. “ _This will save countless lives_ ,” André promised her in an earnest and excitement which Peggy would come to share after reading his thesis, “ _but I need to rewrite a few of the my calculations for a different variable before it is fit to present to my peers for review._ ”

‘ _Why?_ ’ she had asked.

“ _You can call it love, or you can call it hate - and I am certain from our various sessions over the past two years my subjects have thought of it as both and neither - but I based the majority of my hypothesis on the fact that ‘Patient B’ fears hurting ‘Patient A’ more than anything else in this world. It is a behavioural pattern, however, which he is unwilling to break and now it seems I have had a hand in arranging a scenario in which he has no choice but to continue this dangerous cycle. I had originally assumed that ‘A’ was the more volatile of the two, but with Arnold now missing … If only there were a way to monitor them during my stint at Belleview,_ ’ he cursed. _‘Don’t worry, Love; I’m certain I can convince someone on either my research or my former association football team to keep me updated on their movements_.’

Peggy, not one to trust fate to blindly do her bidding, had since come on a more direct means than the one her lover had half proposed. She left the André residence on Saturday night in tears she had not expected to cry and taken a taxi to Abigail’s, excusing her sobs  to her oldest and truest friend that she was sorry she had not been there for her when things ended with Jordan. Abigail replied that she had not wanted to call her, had not wanted to distract her from the finals she would have otherwise been revising for.

This made Peggy cry harder. Impossible as it was to tell her about John André amidst the other personal and political catastrophes to which they had been damned by providence, Peggy found she could not so much as speak the name of her Panhellenic chapter without choking.

“ _I can’t go back to school_ ,” Peggy told her when the tears finally stopped, lying with the truth, “ _DI Tallmadge wants me to stay in the area. I have to give a press statement tomorrow at two and Abby, oh Abby, you have to come with me._ ”

“ _Of course,_ ” Abigail yawned. It was two o’clock in the morning, and while the hour may have defined the dreariness they shared, Peggy Shippen could not use timing as an excuse for her overall demeanour, nor would she think to. The daughter of a proud political dynasty, she had no concept of what differentiated manipulative behaviour from ordinary interaction.

“ _You don’t understand_ ,” she continued with now-erroneous sorrow. “ _The police want to talk to you too, about something you have written … I am not sure what I said, I could have said anything … when I found out from the police that you and Jordan had called things off … I was so shocked, but I didn’t mean_ -”

 _“It wasn’t you,”_ Abigail dismissed. “ _They want to talk to me because no one can find John André and based on a few samples of my novel, they think that I may have had access to certain files I should never have seen.”_

 _“And did you?”_ Peggy blinked.

Abigail brought her upstairs into her bedroom and pulled something out of one of the few dresser drawers that had yet to be boxed up. The ever-accumulating cartons had doubled in number since Peggy was at the same address a few nights prior. “ _Where are you going, now that you aren’t moving to Brooklyn?_ ” she asked with an innocence neither forged nor forced. Abigail handed her a piece of paper she told her she had stolen from the office a few weeks prior, after Hewlett’s attempted suicide, before André’s public lynching. “ _I am moving to Whitehall next week. It is temporary. It is all I could find on such short notice_ ,” adding beneath her breath, “ _of all the stabs of irony.”_

 _“Hm?”_ Peggy inquired as she read.

“ _Patient B is better known to you as Edmund Hewlett. This is why I asked you to go out with Dr André last Tuesday. Why I have misgivings about Hewlett’s intentions towards one of my best friends. I want to trust that he isn’t as treacherous as his chart suggests, but … No. No but. Anna is a smart girl. I trust her intuition. And yours.”_

If Hewlett was ‘B’, the identity of ‘A’ was not especially hard to deduce. Peggy inhaled deeply, slowly, and for the few seconds her lungs grasped the stale, dry air that tasted of the cardboard from which it stank, her mind grappled with doubt. _“Oh, Abby. Are you sure? I’m worried about you being at Whitehall, with, well with -”_

“ _Girl, I wouldn’t put Cicero in harm’s way, you know that. And André told you that Hewlett was harmless.”_

Sure, Peggy thought, because we had yet to sleep together and he had want to change to conversation. “ _Abby_ ,” she adapted her apprehension into an action she hoped would prove beneficial to all parties,   _“since I have to stay in town for the foreseeable future anyway, do you know if Judge Woodhull has additional rooms for rent?”_

This raised Abigail’s eyebrows, _“Donald Trump not offer to keep putting you up? Isn’t your father a donor and a surrogate?”_

“ _No, I mean he is and … he is, but I would rather stay with you_.” As with most of her dealings, this was indeed deception, but it was not a lie unto itself. Peggy did love Abby and Cicero. She loved Anna, too, and she liked Edmund from what little she knew of him, which was not to say that she did not feel she could sort him if need arose. But André? He was her destiny. And he would see it too, surely, he would see it too, when she brought him weekly dossiers, when she gave him every detail of enemy movement as taken from within. If she could get to ‘B’, she could get to ‘A’, and she could get Dr André out of the intensive psych ward. He would convince Dandridge of his validity and Congress of his value. The war would end. He had promised her, and even knowing and weighing the possible influence of his (currently missing) donor against his words, Peggy believed him.

She had no concept of what differentiated manipulation from adoration.

She had never had her heart broken.

At twenty-two, she had no reason to believe she ever would.

Everything was already working out better than she had hopped. Whitehall’s acting proprietor was a porcelain doll with a political surname and an English lover who was otherwise known as ‘Patient A’ in André’s thesis. And he was coming over. And he was bringing dinner. And Peggy had a hunger that was hard to satisfied.

 

* * *

 

Easton, having said goodbye to Mary in the kitchen, was escorted to the door by Aberdeen and herself. Peggy told the au pair in whispers as they slowly made their way back, that she, too, had begun an affair, feeling the atmosphere before hazarding to open herself to Mary, hoping to learn what lay secret in her heart.

“With Arnold?” Aberdeen asked, adding as seemed to be her favourite device, “I know. Everyone in the whole damn world knows. The Daily Mail said so, too. Even on its Twitter.”

“No,” Peggy forced a giggle, making a mental note to look into scholarship programmes regardless of the girl’s lack of gratitude. Aberdeen would benefit so much, she decided, from classes in rhetoric at an institution with a debate society. In turn, so would their conversation. “With someone else,” Peggy teased. “It has only been four days -four tumorous days at that - but I have never been happier. Say … how long has this been going on, between Simcoe and Mary?” she inquired hopefully.

“I ‘ave only known about it for around as long,” Aberdeen admitted, after supposing aloud that she could forgive Peggy her misplaced joviality – something she cautioned might tone down if she wanted to make it in New York or “ _even this shit ‘ol of a suburb_.”

“Funny how these things happen so fast,” Peggy mused, immune to critique. “Mary and her John, me and mine.”

“You need to listen to me,” Aberdeen said, pulling her around a corner. “Parlez-vous français?”

“Oui, un petit peu,” Peggy lied. She was fluent. Aberdeen seemed to sense as much as she told her breathlessly, “Don’t trust any man from New York. Mr Woodhull? Both Mr Woodhulls – scum. Liars! The son is queer and thinks no one knows it. The father leers at me and thinks I don’t see it. But I do – I see most of what happens here. But New York? It can trick you! And for love, we let it. We all let it! I was enamoured with a boy for two years before learning he was just another plain clothes copper – only humouring me from time to time to become information about the Judge, or this, or that, or the other. Don’t fall for it! For any of it. Especially out here in the suburbs. In Setauket. This town is wicked.”

“Why don’t you say anything to Mrs. Woodhull about her husband if that is true?” Peggy puzzled.

“It wouldn’t matter if I did. Everyone talks here but no one listens. I know this from every moment I’ve spent in America. I know this also from you. I think not that I am the first one to have warned you about New York men. I see it in your face. But it is not your fault. It is just this place. Don’t smile so much. If you do, the city will do you in.”

Before she could question the true source of this sudden empathy, the doorbell rang. Mary called to them to see if they would not mind opening it. Both rushed to her service, opening the house to an atypically tall man with bags of take away who greeted them politely with a voice as cold and chiming as a gush of winter air. “May I come in? Mrs. Woodhull is expecting me.”

 

* * *

 

John Graves Simcoe was thoroughly enjoying himself as he gauged the girls’ identical, open-mouthed expressions. This might well be, he considered -thanks to Hewlett’s interference - the last time in his life anyone would ever gaze upon him with awe and reverence. By Wednesday, he would be wearing a hearing aid, and though the device might allow him to again enjoy the simple pleasures of phoning people whose physical presence he could hardly tolerate, he would miss moments like these. He would miss this last lasting semblance of normalcy very much, indeed. They spoke, and Simcoe realised how very afraid he was of another visible attribute that would further separate him from an already alienating society. The only honest hope he had of the device was that any display of his disability would bar him from promotion. That he would have to stay in New York. That some of what now was would last.  He was whole here, and this epiphany frightened him more than any external threat.

The girls introduced themselves as Aberdeen and Peggy, respectively. He knew the former from Hewlett’s paranoid accusations, the latter from the round the clock media coverage concerning the crime the afternoon had made him confident Tallmadge was having a difficult time tracing back to him.

“ _Do you know what this is?_ ” the inspector had asked as he passed him a manila folder containing a print out of an email. Simcoe had been awaiting as much since being forced into the back of a police car, his cuffed hands still shaking with choler.

“ _Hm_ ,” the Brit buzzed as he half-studied it, “ _It appears to be, oh, help me out here, Inspector – since I had rather anticipated we would be talking about footy, what is that expression from your American interpretation of the game? A Hail Mary, is it?”_

Tallmadge muttered something while staring at the same dossier, Simcoe asked him to kindly repeat himself, to enunciate clearly.

“ _You injured my constable in a similar fashion_ ,” the inspector said again of a decade old medical report.

 _“And for that I’ve been harshly reprimanded_ ,” Simcoe informed him. _“Not only have I been locked in here for the past six hours waiting on … I suppose, either yourself or your printer, but the league has given me a five match ban and a $200 fine – both of which I am prepared to protest given the injures your constable inflicted upon my forward. In fact … in fact, given DC Baker’s conduct, I think every minute you keep me in here is only going to make your situation out there all the worse. You have a history violent misconduct, do you not, Tallmadge?”_ He had done this dance before in Britain with brighter and better; where he had let the interaction play out in his mind since Hewlett had given the inspector reason to make him a prime suspect (in an act of what he likely saw as testimony to his self-accessed brilliance), the actualization of the dreaded exchange proved dull.

Simcoe found himself better entertained by a stain on the wall that looked as though someone had once thrown out the contents of their tea cup, which, he gathered from political advertisements, was something Americans took rather a lot of pride in doing, especially in fancy-dress. He wondered why in all of the hours he laid wasting, waiting for Tallmadge to make his move, he was not offered a cup to drink or dispose of as he saw fit. It was extremely rude.

 _“That is quite enough,”_ Tallmadge said, maybe for a second time, likely not for the last. Still, Simcoe took some hope in this assessment.

 _“There we find ourselves in agreeance. Am I being released?”_ he asked cheekily.

 _“No,”_ he was told, as he much knew he would be.

Simcoe smirked in response. _“You can’t hold me on evidence from a crime I was acquitted of and pressing any additional assault charges would ill serve you cause. Tell me, Tallmadge, what exactly makes you think that there is anything connecting me to your investigation?”_ he challenged. _“Until this morning, I’d say I’ve proven myself a vital resource. Mary and I rang the police when we found blood on the roadside. It could well be that it was not Arnold’s, but knowing that you were searching the area, I did my civic duty by reporting suspicious activity, something you have repeatedly asked of the public. I have come in to provide a statement each and every time you have sent summons; frankly, Inspector, I am unsure why I am a person of interest at all. I would appreciate, however, if you could get me in touch with my solicitor if you plan to continue this waste of an interrogation.”_

_“You were given a phone call when you arrived at the station. Why didn’t you take it?”_

_“I’m legally deaf, Inspector. A phone call won’t do me much good in my present state. I suppose, this being America, I might have a case to sue you for damages. I was at an otolaryngologist just yesterday, do you have any idea how expensive -”_

_“Wait, you waited until yesterday?”_ Tallmadge gaped, thrown into a panic Simcoe had failed to anticipate. _“Mr Simcoe,”_ he spoke quickly, _“I warned you when we first met the human bite is incredibly infectious. Why didn’t you heed my warning sooner? I’m truly sorry it came to this but -”_

Simcoe laughed. For a moment, the memory of Mary’s warm mouth drawing blood replaced many less pleasant, but this was of no particular interest to the police. _“It isn’t that. My hearing was severely damaged in a roadside bombing when I was a boy, the rest is psychosomatic, the sense abandons me entirely under sudden stress. In can last anywhere between a few hours and a few months.”_

This admission, too, seemed to cause the good inspector an undue measure of dismay.

 _“And yet you’re a hedge fund manager?”_ Tallmadge squinted.

“ _It has happened during sex before, too,_ ” Simcoe said; if only to make his integrator wince and writhe a bit more than he already was. “ _It can be awkward, I admit, but this is truly the worst I’ve ever had it. But then that can only be expected, you see I’ve never been a suspect in a missing person’s case before.”_

 _“You’ve been a suspect in an attempted murder,”_ Tallmadge accused. In this, he was alone.

 _“No Inspector,”_ Simcoe corrected. _“I was merely a witness. I assume these files came from Ferguson?”_

 _“They did,”_ Tallmadge affirmed, not to the effect he no doubt desired.

“ _Then you didn’t read his analysis clearly. The good inspector found his culprit, and then the state found theirs. I was neither, and I signed a statement swearing I would say no more on the matter. Now I would rather appreciate you putting me in touch with an attorney, Mr Tallmadge, much as I suspect that folder of yours would disappear as soon as any other representative of the court entered the door. Say … we needn’t call my man back from Albany at all, let’s just get your boss in here. Save everyone time and trouble.”_

With that, he knew he had broken him.

 _“I have a better idea,”_ Tallmadge said, defeated. _“Why don’t you write a statement of your version of this morning’s events and I will let you go.”_

 _“Just like that?”_ Simcoe grinned.

 _“I am required by New York and Federal Law to advise you that a sworn statement has the weight of legal testimony, any intentional misrepresentation of the truth could be treated as perjury,”_ the inspector told him, no doubt as though reading from a script. _“I would additionally advise you to be as complete as possible in your recollection.”_

Having no interest in a follow up interview, Simcoe filled five pages with neat script to Tallmadge’s specifications. Half an hour later, he was released to the jubilation of his teammates, the press, and several assorted groups that had gathered to protest, presumably, against Arsène Wenger, which Simcoe considered odd but understandable after the Gunners’ performance against Swansea midweek. He hoped that a loss against Tottenham would cause a riot and said as much to someone who approached him with a microphone.

 _“You shouldn’t have said that,”_ Maglev told him, pulling him to the side. _“Appleton was the first one with a sign before, when the protest had been about Pakistan. They drug him back into interrogation thinking that there is a connection between him and Osama bin Laden as he evidently supported the same club. Hewlett is in there too, arrived back from Albany about half an hour ago. The rest of us are holding vigil for the three, well, now two of you. The others, the occupy types there in the street, only adapted the Wenger thing in solidarity with Appleton after his arrest. I have no idea what the Yanks are making of it but The Daily Mail and The Sun can barely keep their shit together.”_

Simcoe stared at him, wondering which piece of information he had just been given came as more of a shock, wondering if he could be bothered to give a damn about any of it at all.

 _“And Mary?”_ he asked.

_“Robinson?”_

_“Woodhull,”_ Simcoe shouted. Maglev took a step back.

 _“Easton brought her home a few hours ago. She wanted to stay but we were all a tad afraid she was going to get herself put into holding. We started a collection to buy her flowers and a get-well soon card …”_ he continued, but after learning the Mary had come to the police station with a broken ankle to appeal for his release, everything else seemed irrelevant.

John Graves Simcoe looked at the news trucks in the car park, the protestors and the swarm of microphones and recording devices of various mediums. “ _Give Hewlett and Appleton my best_ ,” he said to his lads before leaving the circus. He texted with Mary, ordered dinner online, climbed into an Uber which brought him to the four-star restaurant where he had purchased a meal for five before returning him to the Range Rover he had left at the filed earlier. From there, he drove to Whitehall where two girls stared at him in the doorway with something that verged dangerously close to desire, something he enjoyed if only in brevity as he came to grips with how petrified he was that he would never see respect again in any form. “May I come in?” he suggested, “Mrs. Woodhull is expecting me.”

“It’s you,” the one who identified herself as Aberdeen said. “From the photo.”

“What photo?” Simcoe asked.

“From the Daily Mail twitter account, wait,” she hurried back into the kitchen. Wednesday seemed suddenly a pipe dream. Simcoe worried he might not anymore have a reputation to defend.

“You are British,” Peggy said as though it were an accusation. “Settle a debate for us? Daily Mail – legitimate news source?”

“I’m not quite comfortable answering that,” he admitted.

“Peggy,” Mary tried, “you know from recent experience how the press can twist things to its own service. If we were just going on the news cycle you and Senator Arnold were in a relationship … of sorts,” she paused as they entered. Her inner sunshine flooded features otherwise made pale from pain and florescent lighting. “John,” she beamed as she struggled to rise. He rushed to her side. “I’m so happy. I’m just so happy to see you. Here.”

“They had no grounds on which to hold me,” he assure her. “Mary, please, sit down.”

“You don’t know where they plates are,” she said as though this validated her excursion. Simcoe could not help but smile.

As the two stood side by side at the counter whilst Thomas asked Peggy if she was Queen Elsa (“from a Disney film,” Mary told him, “his favourite,”); while Aberdeen put the boy in his high-chair and taught him the word for what they were about to eat (‘Homard’); while Mary wondered to him why she had not brought Thomas from his play room sooner (“The two have been fighting over politics and media all afternoon.”) Simcoe felt the warmth of her small body beside his. He felt normal next to her.

Next to her, he felt as though he was in more danger than he had ever known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of contextual notes for you, and not gonna lie, very little chill. (I’m not to be blamed, I was just stood up for a study date, can you believe that mess?) Anyway, let’s have at it, shall we?
> 
>  **Persuasion** : a novel by Jane Austen.
> 
> **DACA** : The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was an Obama era immigration policy that allowed illegals who entered the United States as minors a two year period of deferred action on deportation and the right to apply for a work permit. It was rescinded by the Trump administration in September of 2017.
> 
>  **#jesuiseffie** : a parody on **#jesuischarlie** the hashtag you, I, everyone you ever met and everyone you ever (and never) will used in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January 2015.
> 
>  **Marine Le Pen** : the leader of the French right-wing party Front National (FN.) Regardless of your views, she is worth following on Twitter, for of European politicians she is (singular?) in expressing condolences in the wake of the sort of event that had they happened on your side of the Atlantic would prompt twelve seconds of conversation about gun control (before that got shot down by the NRA sending out gift baskets.) 
> 
> **Mary Robinson** : a pop culture icon in the 18. century. But c’mon, you knew after the last chapter she would at least get a shout out, right? ;)
> 
> … You may have been asking yourself, oh observant, long time reader, if this entire exchange was a self-indulgent protest of **Erdoğan’s constitutional referendum**. Tja. In my defence, we haven’t done that a while. It was time. In case you don’t keep up with the Turkish President’s propaganda tactics, he wears a different football scarf in every town he visits. That is what the underlining joke was about. I know. It isn’t funny if I have to explain it. It isn’t funny at all when a nation votes away its rights. Keep vigilant, everyone.
> 
>  **Arsène Wenger** : recently surpassed Sir Alex’s record in Premiership matches, coaching **Arsenal** in 811 (812 at time of press) league games. In the first week of March 2016, the **Gunners** lost to **Swansea** and drew with archrivals **Tottenham**. The protest that bore his name in this chapter was written in a sort of homage to one that happened recently in Harare, Zimbabwe where cries for **Mugabe** to step down from power became demands for Wenger to leave the Emirates. Aren’t you a little surprised at how much football culture intersects with current events? All I do is politics and football and it still blows my mind.
> 
>  **AFC Sunderland** : did indeed stay up, and what a treat it has been! Ladies and gentlemen, in case you missed it, allow me to direct you to the best thing that happened to football coverage and (pun)ditry in the latter half of 2017:  The Stadium of Shite. 
> 
> **Mitch McConnell** : The Senate Majority Leader. I wish I had a weird titbit of useless but amusing information about him, but I stopped watching Game of Thrones somewhere in the third season. I heard he wins it, if that helps. XP
> 
>  **“I’ve never had Hamburger Helper.”** : I loathe making sweeping generalizations, but this is one that in my experience has been true of all American women of a certain privilege whom I have spoken to on the topic of pre-packaged pasta dishes – they love telling you that they have never had this particular convenience food. Bloody love it. I can only cite a single statement I was given as grounds, _“It is the food of the poor.”_ I don’t know if this is true. I do know it is an exact quote, and in my reach for authenticity I could not help but to include what seems to me from afar to be a low-key expression of classism (that is probably completely socially acceptable over yonder.) I don’t know. Hamburger Helper is a little salty. Maybe I am, too?
> 
> Have any notes for me in return? How was your Christmas? What did you get, what did you give, or, alternatively, what are you most excited about not having to do again until next December? For me, it is Bockwurst, clearly. I guess I will see you all again soon, because …  
> I have a habit of writing complex scenes that become chapters of their own. You already know this.   
>    
> Till then! XOXO - Tav


	33. The Patriot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abe re-evaluates his enemies and his options after learning about Mary’s injury and Simcoe’s innermost doubts form an unexpected source.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the problem I have picked up on in the comments of otherwise remarkably discerning readers, is that Abe’s perspective is so often overshadowed by more dynamic characters that crucial parts of the narrative have been lost. Parts like … Senator Arnold! While I am rather honoured that I have unintentionally managed to capture that aspect of watching TURN in this modern setting, I am thinking that it might serve us all better by getting an isolated take.
> 
> Oh! That doubles as your warning. This is an Abe chapter, as the summary also suggests. But it is the second update you have gotten over the span of five days, and you are getting it now because the plots and perspectives to come make for more provocative reading that that of the protagonist of the series on which this work is based. Forgive me my trespasses? 
> 
> Enjoy ;)

Abe Woodhull drove for a long while without direction. Even if speed barriers in the form of road works had not been present in his routine circles, accelerating to a point where his inner demons could not keep pace would have proven impossible in his wife’s Liberty. These little instigators of doubt materialized as shadows in the corners of his eyes - just out of focus but barley unseen. Their shapes seemed clearer in their dark whispers, amplified by every sound with which he sought to smother them. They told him to drive into a guardrail, into a tree, into abyss. But who then would provide for his son? Abe protested. Who but he had designs to protect the poor senator? Simcoe? He could not allow it.

The radio was no good. Songs of every genre became tragic ballads filled with the usual pestilence of failing expectations. Abe had turned off his phone. The specific unpleasantries of a life so shrouded in secret that shadows cast more comfort than their physical counterparts were left better unheard. He had nowhere to go and nothing to say.  Abe Woodhull had lost his life to his brother’s memory. He had lost his love in a lie and his lucidity to a threat made under a two-post truck lift.

He pulled an album from the above-head storage compartment and pulled into a roadside public toilet facility which austerity had since chained shut. He knew the place well. Abe came to this familiar highway hide away intent on using a bush behind the abandoned building to relieve himself before climbing back into the vehicle parked in an otherwise empty lot to listen to some dead poet’s attempt to make sense of life’s disappointments or at least put them to song. A song which Abe knew all too well. One of many he could hear in silence, one that could silence thoughts when spun. Occasionally, he took from these moments and the shadows that spawned them a sense that somewhere, someday, someone would stop on the side of the road and seek refuge in a Culper Ring CD that spoke to a struggle they alone could not sort. They would find an answer in his lyrics, and the idea of giving counsel to a stranger made his problems seem solvable in themselves. He would return to the road, and, for a time, he would know exactly where he was going. And when he again lost direction he would return to Woodstock by way of this same abandoned rest area, by way of his shadows and of the ones belonging to the evening alone to whom he was indifferent.

As Abe pulled up his trousers after relieving himself of Rogers’ orange-juice and whatever remained of the drugs he had let the Scotsman prescribe to undo the effects of the night before, he noticed another automobile on the far side of car park. Though naturally paranoiac, it would not have struck him in particular save for the fact that he could identify it at ease. Abe glanced around; momentarily certain he had be followed. He approached Anna’s old four-door sedan with a caution that quickly turned to consternation when he spotted the driver bent over the wheel. Abe banged frantically on the window, his heart pounding quicker than his fist; half-certain the driver’s had given out. Seconds that felt like centuries past before the greying man whose face was blackened with bruises nearly as dark and lurid as his blinking eyes looked up. He was not dead.  

Edmund Hewlett was his enemy in every sense, but he was not dead. Without yet a valid reason for the physiological response, Abe found himself in tears. 

“Abraham, what on earth are you doing here?” Hewlett asked -annoyed as seemed his standard - whilst he cranked down his window by hand.

“I thought you were dead,” Abe replied breathlessly. “That you had had a heart attack or … whatever you are on all of those pills for.” He knew vaguely from Anna and Mary that his father’s boarder cum favoured son was plagued by some rare genetic condition. Given a hospital stay a few months prior, Abe had reason to suspect that, unlike with his friend Caleb’s approaching fate, whatever Hewlett was stricken with was far from stable. But he hadn’t died. Not alone. Not out here. Abe did not know why this came as some comfort.

Wondering darkly if Mary had first met Simcoe over Hewlett’s sick bed, he rather found himself wishing that the foreigner’s heart had failed him before necessitating that his wife bring a toiletry kit, before Anna had agreed to be his bride, before any of them had reason to fret over the whereabouts of Senator Benedict Arnold. Edmund Hewlett was the enemy and he wished every measure of ill to befall him, but even so, as the man whom he hated without ration or reason spoke, Abe found himself giving thanks to the Lord God that he had not found him dead in the middle of a paradise known to none.

“Do you also take liberty with my medicine cabinet?” Hewlett squinted, burying his brow in his hand. He reasserted his original inquiry before Abe had ample time to consider an answer to the accusation. “You thought I was dead … that still doesn’t answer my question. Why aren’t you in hospital?”

Abe took a step back from the vehicle.

For a moment, the last text he had received from Caleb’s number resurfaced from its burial ground, from the moment Abe had switched off his mobile, fearful that it was being tracked. “With DI Tallmadge? Or,” he paused, thinking back to the fight he was almost in with the pale Pakistani whom he was but certain had assaulted Senator Arnold (and possibly on Hewlett’s orders), “Or was it your plan to have your mate put me there?” He felt his lip curl. The man in the car twisted his bruised face in such a way that reminded Abe of a Rorschach inkblot test. Abe, befuddled, began to second-guess every explanation he had offered thus far. “What hospital?” he tried anew.

“Bloody hell, man! With yer gud’wife!” Hewlett returned with a hint of an accent that he often supressed. In it, Abe heard every threat Robert Rogers had made against his family. They felt suddenly realised. He pictured Caleb and the inspector trying to track him down and in the process finding Arnold in the Scot’s underground cellar. He pictured Rogers, livid that his retirement plan had been taken out from under him, exacting revenge in some horrible manner upon the very person to whom it had been promised should Abe speak. That he had not was of little interest now. He had been damned from the start. Had Hewlett come to inform him? How did he know where he would stop? How long had he been waiting? How long had he been watching and how had it taken him this long to work out that the two Caledonians were in cahoots? “And Thomas?” Abe asked, his voice shaking.

“With Aberdeen,” Hewlett frowned, confused by either the question or the tone in which it was phrased. “At home. She has no way of driving to meet Mary, having wrecked my transmission and – do you have your phone off?” he knotted his brow in frustration. “Abraham, you need to ring your wife.”

“It died,” Abe lied.

“Take mine,” Hewlett offered.

Abe held the device, fingers frozen as his housemate recounted events at the old soccer field after he had left. Alone. Angry. Angry, not that Mary had stayed behind, but rather that his plan to get her lover arrested had been shattered by the presence of a man he had recognised from the raid as a police constable -a man who had given Mary the beating Abe had been prepared to take to achieve the same end of Simcoe’s imprisonment.

It was worse than the whispers of shadows.

He could not go to the police. If it had ever been an option, it was no longer.

It had been foolhardy to seek an ally in Tallmadge or any member of his team. It was just him and Arnold alone in this fight against a group of British ex pats and a corrupt system that allowed their continued presence to stain this beautiful country.

Abe swallowed. He recognised that in part Simcoe and his possible co-conspirators might have been all that kept Setauket safe from those charged with its protection. There was no way out.

“What are you doing here?” Abe echoed Hewlett’s question almost mutely, biding time where he could. He could not call Mary. Not when his own cowardice had caused her casualty. Not when the man he had hoped to protect her from by publically provoking into an act of aggression had been all that stood between outpatient and intensive care.

According to Hewlett’s account, Simcoe had fought to save Mary where Abe himself had fled. As little as he trusted his housemate, having never know Edmund to extend a kind word to his sometimes or supposed friend, Abe believed him when he said that John Graves had done right. The phone buzzed and he handed it back, relieved that none of this had need of voice. His phone died. Hewlett’s rang. He gave it back before he could call. The best excuses, Abe told himself, were simple. Black truths exchanged for white lies.

Hewlett bit his lip as he examined what must have been bad news. “I spoke with my ambassador not an hour ago,” he told him. Abe was unsure why. “The NYPD is requesting the release of my complete medical transcript, and thus far has been met only with red tape. Ah, it is fairly straightforward, I suffer from a condition that could affect other members of my immediate and extended family and – oh, never you mind. I had hoped to barter something to Tallmadge in exchange for my friend’s release. Something Cornwallis had no trouble accessing for me an hour ago but is now unwilling,” he paused, pivoted, putrefied. “You know … Anna quite nearly predicted this. Said that my government was likely in on this conspiracy, too. I hadn’t wanted to believe her but the evidence speaks for itself I am afraid.”

Abe could taste the bitterness of Hewlett’s words in the air that carried them. He could feel their chill creep into his bones. It felt all too familiar. “And so you’ve made yourself an enemy … of the country you love, all because you were trying to do the right thing in helping Tallmadge - the man who wants to see you and the people you most care about locked up,” he summarized, surprised at the subject of his sympathy. He shifted his weight between his feet. “You had nothing to do with Senator Arnold’s disappearance, did you?”

“Of course not,” Hewlett spat. “I am only a person of interest due to general incompetence, both on my part and on theirs … and I dare say that is, why, it is a rather an apocalyptic take on my overall situation. An enemy of Great Britain? No Abraham, just a man forced to see it for all of its complexities,” his speech slowed to a standard pace. “You don’t smoke, do you?” Hewlett asked with a twinge of tempered hope.

“I don’t but … I know where Anna keeps her emergency stash, wait,” Abe answered as he reached across his housemate to the overhead sunglass compartment, finding an unopened package of Marlboros. “She used to keep a lighter here too … um -”

“It is fine. I have one. You too?” he offered, extending the pack and a nearly empty lighter from his jacket pocket.

“Why not?” Abe scoffed, coughing his way through his first inhale. Hewlett climbed out of a car that already smelled cancerous before lighting his own.

“Simcoe and I … we were subjects in a psychological case study it appears Arnold came to New York to get a report on before a security summit. It is a terrible act of serendipity, but here we are I suppose. I want to help the police, but my embassy has taken away the one thing I can offer without,” he winced rather than say ‘what’ in words. “I know what you think of John,” Hewlett continued briskly, “I do and I don’t hold it against you; hell, I imagine we are of the same mind with regard to his person more often than not, but he couldn’t possibly have killed … It is mathematically implausible when not impossible.”

“No … you are right,” Abe agreed. He did not know much about maths outside of music but he knew where Arnold was. He knew he was alive. He knew that without Rogers’ black market morphine that he would be on the mend. Abe could retrace most of the steps that had brought the senator to the hideout. For a moment, he thought to confess to Hewlett, to implore him for his help, but in the interest of Mary and Thomas’ safety immediately reconsidered. “Do you think Simcoe could take Rogers in a fight?” Abe asked instead.

“I think Simcoe could take _most people_ in a fight,” Hewlett scoffed. “It still doesn’t make him – Christ, he had no motive. He is the most wilfully apolitical person I have ever known. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore. Every notion I’ve had on how to appeal on his behalf has backfired. My best friend is in jail. Mary’s ankle is broken. My fiancée is bloody furious at me – something I know smoking will do nothing to improve and … and on top of it all, she was right about my embassy. I don’t have a Plan B” Hewlett murmured, “For once I - I don’t know. I’m at a loss. Truly. That is what I am doing. Sitting in a car park, hoping the British ambassador will reconsider my request as though bureaucratic incompetence is something worth believing in.” He kicked at the gravel. “I can’t let this happen. John is a long way from innocent but I can’t stand here and let him face punishment for a crime I know he didn’t commit.”

Pitying him, Abe forced a smile. “It probably doesn’t help,” he said, “but … I wish I had a friend like you. Sometimes.”

“We don’t have to be enemies.”  

They could not be anything but.

“Is Simcoe sleeping with my wife?” Abe returned. He could accept that Hewlett likely had nothing to do with Arnold, that he was victim to his own arrogance as they all so often were. By value of association, however, he was a greater threat to Abe and the Woodhull name than Rogers, the police, or the treasonous motives they served. It was a pity. Hewlett was a decent man. Abe could see himself otherwise liking him. Almost.

Hewlett took a long inhale, causing his fag to blister, burn and break. He closed his eyes as though doing so would help him search of sort his heart and mind. “Between you and I? I quite honestly doubt it,” he answered, flat but far from hard.

“So you don’t believe his alibi? _Or Mary’s?”_ Abe challenged.

“I believe were together … in Connecticut when the police are stating the crime took place. Here,” he handed Abe what remained of his cigarette, opened the car door and reached under the driver’s seat. “I found this unloading the car this afternoon. Unopened.” Abe examined the receipt and the box of condoms it spoke of, imagining a very different scene than the one that had haunted him for days. “Also I,” Hewlett continued with notable hesitation, “that is I’ve known Simcoe for a long time, he may well be very attracted to your wife but I … I doubt it to be substantial. Rather, I don’t think it will substantiate. He has this … ah, how should I put it? Are you much familiar with the ideals of Courtly Love?”

“From Hole?” Abe squinted, “Kurt Cobain’s window?”

“Christ,” Hewlett sighed. “You Americans and your drought of historical and literary reference points.”

“What – what are you on about, then?”

Edmund Hewlett did not seem so sure himself. “Ah, that is, what I am trying to impart is that Simcoe prefers the whole ceremony of affection to actual manifestation. He is driven by the idea of a perfect love with an unobtainable woman. It is not something that is meant to be realised, it is an aspiration, an artistic ideal more than a romantic one,” he tried.

“And Simcoe is an artist?” Abe scoffed.

“Poet. You um … you may actually be familiar with some of his work,” Hewlett seemed to defend.

“From my wife’s nightstand?”

“I … I wouldn’t know about that. I meant -”

“I wouldn’t either,” Abe interrupted. “If there was anything, Tallmadge must have grabbed it in the sweep,” he paused. “I’ve never written my wife a poem.”

“My fiancée found a whole book full of sketches I did of her … thought it was ah … that I fancied myself a mangaka, that all on my attempts at capturing her essence were magical girls of various shōjo series from the early nineties.”

“I don’t … know what that is,” Abe admitted, hoping that in doing so he had not invited Hewlett to make a snide comment about something absent for American culture.

“For the best,” his housemate said to his relief. “Um. Artistic gifts of any kind may be overrated. It has never worked for Simcoe either, to my knowledge. You’ve see it with Anna, Sally. With any and every woman who has found herself the subject of his verse, that is  – I’ve never known him to so much as voice that he considers the possibility of admiration to be mutual. He just writes. Notebooks of the stuff. It is all fantasy. It is all he is emotionally equipped to handle. You see …”

“What?”

“Just give it a few weeks. It will burn itself out and nothing will come of it. Provided things are sorted here - that Senator Arnold’s whereabouts are uncovered - Simcoe will return to the black hole of Calcutta. He is due for promotion, and,” he smiled sadly. “Let’s be honest, London doesn’t want him, there is no spot for a man of his talents in New York, and as he is fluent in multiple regional languages, I expect Barclay’s -”

Hewlett seemed to be bidding time. Abe had heard enough. “I’m a professional songwriter and musician; I’ve been in relationships like that. Like Cortney Love. I can’t say that any of them lacked a physical element.” he interrupted with admission and accusation.

Hewlett lit another cigarette from the embers of the one held awkwardly between his long, thin lips. “It is truly not my place to say -”

“But?” Abe demanded.

“He was nearly married, once. John. They broke things off, he and this girl and he moved to America. Went back for holiday, began to rekindle an old romance and, much like your Mary, she wound up pregnant. So he returned to London with intent on making the move permanent, only … um. Listen, Abraham. I ought not to be telling you this. It would be for the best if you -”

“Please.”

“Al-alright. Effie, um, the girl he was once due to wed, had an abortion late in her second trimester for emergency medical reasons, something was said to John in hospital - I am not sure exactly what – having heard various recollections, none of which I have any reason to doubt,” he paused. “A bit fuuny, innit? How the same truth can look so different from various vantage points?”

“What is _your_ point?”

“Mine? Well, regardless of what actually happened, the affair left Simcoe with the impression that he was unworthy and unwanted. I think now … in Mary, he sees a beautiful woman who did what he considers the right thing in having your child, in building a life and a marriage with you in the hopes of giving the boy the sort of youth at least everyone I know wishes theirs had been. It’s beautiful, in a way - especially taken from John’s perspective. He cannot touch it without breaking it and so he won’t. Just let him pretend for a short time to belong to that happiness – he won’t do anything to disrupt it, not permanently. He is only in love with decisions she once made that have nothing to do with him. And he will realise that in short order. He always does. Anyway. He will be gone by the month’s end.” Hewlett rubbed his temples as he seemed to recite, “Go home, Abraham. Tell your wife you love her; tell her you are sorry -”

“And Simcoe?”

The question gave him pause. “Forgive him, too. I doubt highly that he means you, or your marriage, any real harm. Nothing against Setauket, quite the contrary, really, but it is too small of a place to hold a grudge. Lord knows we have had our differences, you and I, but it was never my intent … well. Simcoe. Simcoe will be gone. Provided I can get him released from police custody.” It sounded almost like an offer. Abe had no idea what he was being asked to do.

“Tell me, Hewlett, what do you think … about my marriage?” he asked after a while spent in silence, wondering what it must be to want the life he was nearly willing to end a few mile markers to the north. Abe hated himself without knowing who he was. He questioned whether he had anything worthy of covet, if he was worthy of what he had, if he could ever hope to be. He felt bad for Simcoe. He felt bad for Mary. They were both substituting one another for something that had failed or had fallen away. He envied that either had that option.

“I hope this doesn’t come off as disrespectful, but to be honest, Abraham,” Hewlett answered, “I didn’t give your marriage all that much thought until I recognised that it would be the source of my oldest friend’s newest heartbreak a few days ago when all of this came out.”

Abe laughed. “You are alright, you know that?”

“I have my doubts,” Hewlett smiled with more than a hint of irony. Abe returned it in earnest. The man was at his wits end, waiting in an abandoned rest stop for an answer that may never come. He, and presumably everyone he cared for on this side of the Atlantic was a suspect in a possible murder inquiry, pawns in a game with dangerous players. Yet he attempted to offer comfort to a man who had never given him a single kindness, even in the form of a thought. Abe hated himself for reasons more tangible than the tangle of secrets and lies that would surely become the noose by which they were all hung. Hewlett for all of his faults did not deserve his suspicion or animosity; Abe reasoned that he probably did not deserve the delicacy with which the foreigner met his ugliness.

“I hated the idea of you and Anna. Hated it.”

“I am well aware,” Hewlett replied dryly, “You’ve told me as much on multiple occasions.”

“But you are okay, aren’t you? You know Hewlett – er,  Edmund -”

“Hmm?”

“Anna is lucky. I really wish I had a friend like you. Hell, I wish I _was_ a friend like you. Caleb is a person of interest now. Because of me. And Mary. God damn I … I was so sure, I was just so sure you had something to do with Senator Arnold that I -”

“Oh I do,” Hewlett confessed almost casually. Abe choked. “I mean to find him, if only so we can set this whole nonsense … you see I, I have some trouble trusting the police after everything I’ve been put through these past few days. Arnold could not have left Setauket. Maybe they are keeping him here?” he began to babble. “I worked out the numbers with Simcoe and there simply was not time between Arnold being reported missing and patrols being stationed at every motorway out of town for him to have gotten far. He is hiding … or someone is hiding him, to what end I can’t imagine … and I -or Anna rather – well, she has come on this plan to find out where which I mean to enact in her stead.”

“What plan?” Abe asked.

“Something I’ll likely jeopardised in confiding in you.”

The best deceptions, Abe reasoned, were simple. White lies for black truths. “I know how easily you might see me as the bad guy in your narrative. In your whole tragic … But I,” he closed his eyes. “I want my wife to be happy. I want my family to be safe. I thought … maybe it was xenophobia, maybe it was something as simple and complex as envy … I thought that you, that Simcoe – that you had something to do … that,” he stopped. It was senseless to voice the parts of his suspicions that had lost their bearing. “We are on the same side. At least when it comes to wanting to help Arnold without involving the police or raising their suspicions, we share more than you imagine.”

“So be it.”

Hewlett explained that it being an election year, people would be accustom to strangers knocking at their door for any variety of reasons. They would collect donations for charity. They would organize a fundraiser for new uniforms for the soccer team Simcoe coached. They would collect signatures in support for Arnold’s defence bill. They would help Aberdeen champion her cause for racial equality. And then, in the evenings, they would compare notes on each address. Anything that seemed suspect they would examine again the next day, with different spies, until they came on something concrete.

‘They’ Abe quickly came to discover, included Mary.

Unrelated to Simcoe or any other third party, his marriage was over. He would lose his wife and the cover she gave him. He would lose his father and the love and respect he more hoped for than knew. Maybe, Abe thought, he should have written her a song.

“Spying by way of social justice?” he summarized. “You are … a lot better at this that I am.”

“You mustn’t chide yourself on such grounds. Espionage … well it is all a rather messy business. I’d not engage if I thought it avoidable, but so long as my name, and those of my friends need to be cleared, I’m prepared to do that which must be done.”

“I can get my friends and my fans involved,” Abe offered. “Bernie or Bust? Something.”

“Sounds promising. Give me a day or two to work out all of the logistics. And Abraham … thank you. It is much unexpected, frankly, frankly I am relived. I thought you … for a moment I - It doesn’t matter. Thank you.” He seemed genuine in his gratitude. He seemed to seek no personal gain. Abe trusted him, enough. He trusted that he was a fool.

“You’re alright,” Abe assessed again. “And hey, if you need a band for your wedding, Culper Ring offers discounts to fellow conspiracy theorists,” he smiled.

“I’ll run that by Anna.”

Abe left the car park half an hour later with an idea of where to bring Arnold where Anna’s logistical brilliance could not reach him. It was a pity. Hewlett would have made a good friend and a better ally.

He could not go to the police. They had gone too far in their exercise of power in injuring his wife to gain grounds to arrest a man, whom, Abe reasoned, they would have no reason to believe was guilty had it not been for his own mistrust and marital doubt. He took the bag with a receipt in Simcoe’s name and a date and time that verified a shared alibi. Abe ripped the package open, shoved two of the eight condoms in his wallet and had a mind the bring the rest of the bag’s contents to Tallmadge as evidence, apologising to Caleb that he had ruined his date with paranoid accusations he had since proved himself right on. If things with Tallmadge had gone as well as Caleb initially indicated, he was already forgiven. Mary would forgive him, too, eventually.

He would save Arnold. He had a plan.

It was a pity. He liked Hewlett. Almost. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .. I’m actually quite fond of Abe Woodhull. Which is a ‘pity’ given what is immediately in store for him.
> 
> Notes? It was a short chapter. I have but one:
> 
> **Mangaka** : A professional comic book artist. In googling this word (which I didn’t know), I discovered that there is a legit German Ausbildung where you spend three years (I guess) learning how to draw Japanese comics in accordance with the highly rigorous, controlled system of apprenticeship. Globalization. Who knew. Substitute ‘-chen’ for ‘-chan’ and come on over, live your teenage dream. Order a Bockwurst, but only at a pub, and only when you are watching footy and realise you haven’t eaten all day. I should work for the tourism and/or immigration board, which are also jobs you get after a three-year state tested apprenticeship.
> 
> I had not expected to upload this as a one off, so where I often take the time to come up with clever nouns with meanings that can be applied to varied elements in different ways, **The Patriot** was straight lifted last minute form a Mel Gibson film I have never seen. But I should! Apparently, I share a name with the primary villain, which is exactly what I look for in period drama, as we all do, I’m sure. Well, that and gorgeous, ginger warriors covered in the blood of their enemies.   
>  Ah! I miss Simcoe, so much that I ... I'll be back soon. Cheers.


	34. The Princess and the Dragoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversing with his subconscious in a cellar somewhere between Oyster Bay and Baghdad, Benedict Arnold addresses his doubts, demons and desires only to find they share the same face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, lovely faces! What’s good? Strange way to introduce a chapter, even I’ll admit, but I just learned of another bizarre overlap between Arsène Wenger and African politics that I simply must share. Former Monaco star George Weah is now the president elect of Liberia set to assume office on 22.01.2018. Good on him. His stance? Pro Wenger. Said in a recent interview the man is like a father figure to him. Right on then!
> 
> Another crossover from the brilliant world of football that absolutely floor me this week of which you might not yet be aware: apparently, Burn Gorman was at Anfield making a complete tit of himself recently. It is as canon as it will be, people – Hewlett is a Liverpool fan! (How…?) The thing that makes this all the better is that Sam Roukin supports Everton, which adds LAYERS to their on-screen animosity (okay, not really.) Seriously though, how am I (to date) the only one writing a football fic? Defies logic.
> 
> If you are keeping track though (and I doubt you are; I have not mentioned this in a while) H+S Simcoe is a QPR fan (as with Rogers’ support of “The Gers”) simply for the nomenclature. Last note on this, since I picked on Sunderland fans a few weeks back in the end notes, I feel it is only fair to mention - had I made Simcoe a Newcastle fan instead, he would defiantly have been the bloke to punch a police horse. Missed opportunity? Perhaps. 
> 
> Right. I have an actual update to bring in, and it is a _bit_ different from what you are used to. (And not only because I am giving you two new! canon! POVs.) I hope you’ll bear with me. Your possible trigger warning include: The wars on Terror (Bush) and Drugs (Nixon), carnage, cauterization, cartels, poverty, sexuality, sharia, collusion, prison, populism, light Freudian themes, references to antiquity and … the January transfer window. Scary stuff, kids. 
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy!

“Is it still a love story if the ending’s a sad one?”

Arnold was not certain of the answer was universal. In the dusk of the desert, eyes watering from exhaustion and the dust kicked up in their retreat, he felt sure that love was elusive, that it was the first feeling man forgot when he felt the weight of a rifle in his hand.

His second-in-command would never hold a weapon again. Arnold knew what it looked like when a warrior was facing his final battle. The enemy was internal; it was remembrance and remorse. For a lad far too young to have been given charge of the vanguard, it was the death of his father, it was a fight he had had with a friend back at Oxford, a debt he couldn’t settle and a crush he had convinced himself was unrequited in a moment of cowardice. That would have to serve as his legacy. The lieutenant general was hardly listening. By all probability, the boy would be dead by morning, long before they had made it back to base.

Benedict Arnold remembered very little about the colonel beyond the mnemonics of a dying mind preserved by a double shot of morphine. He fully forgot every detail of who the boy had been before the explosion which surely had since ended him. Were it not for the last words he exchanged with the ferryman rank had forced Arnold to play, nothing about that January morning would warrant reflection.

“Yours hasn’t been written yet,” he had tried to assure him. The boy looked at him with glazed eyes, blood and bile coughed up over the last hour caked into his three-day stubble; his shivering body rejecting the pollutants and poisons the lieutenant general had given him to numb the pain of cauterization. Arnold felt his forehead with the back of his hand. It was too late. His fever was too high. Infection had set in. He would die in the back of a Humvee, denied Valhalla by the same arrogance that had seen him slain.

“Do you know the story of Scaevola?” Arnold tried, reacting to a reflex that no longer served any function.

"I am Gaius Mucius,” the boy smirked, speaking in a falsetto that felt copied. “A citizen of Rome. I came here as an enemy to kill my enemy, and I am as ready to die as I am to kill. We Romans act bravely and, when adversity strikes, we suffer bravely."

“Then suffer bravely,” Arnold told the lad in reference to what reaching shards remained of the right hand that had tried to bat his own away. The laughter that followed turned into another coughing spell. Two bullets were still buried in his torso. Crippling though it may have otherwise proven, the cosmetic damage to the boy’s forelimb was the least of Arnold’s concerns. The boy would be dead soon and he would have to explain the casualty to his commanding officer. He had done everything he could to stop him. To save him. In a few weeks, Arnold would sign a document faxed to him by some British coroner. He would watch other men die in his command and he would order each of them to face their last front as he had previously, as he did now, as he hoped the men who followed him had faced all others: As soldiers. As officers. As men whose sacrifices served a greater purpose. As Arnold hope that he, too, would have the strength to meet his end when it should seek him.

“Are you married?” he asked.

The lad smiled sadly. “When you ring my next of kin … tell them -”

“I’m not going to need to call anyone,” he interrupted. It was not a comfort, nor was it a lie. The young colonel attached to the joint operation did not belong to the United States Armed Forces. That duty would fall to garrison commander. Arnold would simply need to give an account. It was a form. A signature. His name would appear on the final page of the boy’s service record, something that could be cited when children the English officer would either never meet or never know saw his picture behind a panel of glass in the living room of some relative or another. ‘ _Under General Arnold_ ,’ would be repeated with pride until questions ceased, until photographs faded or memory did.

“I’m not married,” the boy answered. “I asked a girl once but … no one will mourn or miss me, I fear.”

Benedict Arnold related to the sentiment he sensed. He, too, felt more at home in lands he hardly knew. “I don’t imagine any of your men will ever forget you. I don’t imagine any of your enemies will either,” he tried to smile.

“Enemies? We make war as the Romans did,” the colonel returned with a slightly sardonic chuckle. “I’d be ashamed before you if I hadn’t lain them all to waste.”

This, too, spoke to Arnold’s sense of self. “Keen on history, are we?”

“Not really.”

“Latin?”

“Latin?” the lad coughed. “Pfft! The way you complain about my accent, you’d think I barely have a command of English. No. I boarded with a lad who sustained himself by indulging in all of this shite. Quoted Livy enough that I guess I gathered the gist of it after years spent in the same godforsaken cell. You can write the tit for me, tell him my last conversation was with the American Ares over Roman propaganda. He would like it, I’m sure. The one thing I’ll ever have done in life that the cunt can get behind without having it create an ethical conflict. Or maybe it will. Maybe he will spend the next week or two bemoaning every ill he thinks himself to have suffered at the hands of his cherished rival Ed-,” he paused. Though his head remained on Arnold’s lap, the commander could tell he was hardly with him. “You know what the sick thing is? Bastard is probably sipping sherry in Dover right now with his gorgeous fiancée, quoting Caesar to her uncle without considering for an instant how very much he sounds like a certain Hewlett when he tries to show everyone how wonderfully clever he finds himself ... and I am going to die for his continued freedom to do so. Bullocks, ‘innit?”

“You from Scotland?” Arnold asked in relation to the stated surname.

“Are you having a go at me?” the boy squinted.

“Dover?”

Benedict Arnold would have likely forgotten the exchange in its entirety if the Greek epithet the boy bestowed had not later found its way into a campaign poster. He would not remember him now if not for his final order to him: “I’ve made my share of mistakes today; don’t leave me to tally my initial assumption of your bravery and ambition among them. Life isn’t fair, Colonel, but by no means allow that statement to suggest to you that it is not worth the fight. Fight because you are more deserving than those who would chose comfort over country. Fight for your share of the same spoils. Fight if only because you are a solider being ordered to do so. Regardless of reason, you will not signal death with a white flag. Not under my command.”  

He had been telling himself the same thing for days, but found now that there was no mercy to be found in merely surviving. If memory served, the boy in fact had stuck it out for a few hours longer. He had gotten back to base but had not made it to the infirmary. He lost, just as Arnold had suspected. In the end, they all would share the in same fate.

Arnold wondered if death might take up his current challenge of combat. He wondered if repeating the word ‘fight’ in his mind to a point in which its meaning was lost served any purpose beyond reminding him what a warrior looked like when he could no longer lift his sword and shield.

He knew he had a fever. He knew that his condition was worsening with the opioids his captor used to control the pain. He knew the unceasing prattle against the cellar door belonged to precipitation; that spring existed in Setauket in ways that failed the desert.

He knew himself to take some comfort in the drug-induced daze that allowed him imagine that he was under enemy fire.

It was preferable.

On the field, he stood a fighting chance. Here he was helpless and that reality caused him far more pain than the leg he was certain to lose. Arnold fell asleep, thinking once more of his erstwhile Scaevola, envying the fire he had forced upon him to stop the blood flow, envying the boy’s composure in the face of field medicine and the ferocity of his scream when he at last cried out. He envied that his last shared memories had been filled with siblings, schoolmates, lovers and laughter; with former friends who spoke in Latin amongst themselves in seaside estates. He envied the military issued morphine that had delivered him from the sanguine stench of battle as opposed to the prescription opioids that did nothing against the scent of boiled eggs. He envied the soldier’s death the boy had suffered under a setting desert sun hours after his time had come.

But what Arnold most envied was that the British colonel had died wondering if love stories could have tragic endings. He himself had to live with the answers he arrived at in a dive bar days before.

‘ _No one will mourn or miss me, I fear,’_ he told himself in an English accent that evidently belonged to neither Caledonia nor Kent.  ‘ _No one will call my next of kin_ ,’ he bemoaned, his inner voice still barely one of recognition. Perhaps death had heard him, and this was his answer.

 

* * *

 

He had not been home for much of his marriage. Hindsight told him that the affair might well have proved far shorter had profession allowed for the warmth of the hearth. He had served for twenty years. For twenty-one a woman had shared his name.

She had told him once over the phone that the best part of the Super Bowl had been the commercials. His then-wife lacking any appreciation for sport, Arnold had been quick to dismiss this opinion as folly - finding a hidden wisdom in her words days later.

Soccer was, he decided one evening over dinner, by the base measurement Margaret had offered, an affront to American values. The game was an insult to all of those who had served and fallen for the promise of freedom. Arnold had had half a mind to court martial half the men in the mess for treason as he watched them share in the excitement of their English allies over something the garrison commander informed him was an FA Cup Quarter Final. He frowned. A cup, his commanding officer said, was something liken to an American ‘Bowl’. In this, General Clinton had elongated each letter as though it comprised its own separate syllable. Arnold despised the accent and the distain implied in it. Were the two judged on their first definitions, he though bitterly, the ‘ _baoehl_ ’ was superlative in every regard: bigger, deeper, and with a greater capacity for volume. He found every difference between his nation and theirs - linguistic or otherwise - demonstrative of the strength inherent in America’s size. This was no exception.

The British, from what he could tell, saw him in the same respect. At 6’5, he towered over most of the men on the base, easily outweighing each of them in pure muscle. Sometimes he heard servicemen snickering things like ‘GI Joe’ or ‘Captain America’ with regard to his physique, prompting Arnold to order them into drilling exercises until they had breathlessly passed what they defined as their breaking points. It was not the comparison to the cartoons of his childhood which he found offensive, but rather, that most of the rank and file he met had nothing of Saturday morning worth aspiring to. He would turn them into soldiers. Clearly, their own commanders were not up to task. They only measured in cups.

 _‘Not a sporting man, Benedict?’_ a man called Burgoyne teased.

 _‘This isn’t sport,’_ Arnold answered in resolve.

Soccer, as he understood it, was a ninety-minute game that took a mere two hours to broadcast. In such, it stank of socialism, of limits placed upon the free market. In America, he told those at his table, proper sport took an hour to play but close to four to watch when one factored in the numerous add breaks. It was fierce, it was physical, it was another testament to the might and glory of God, to His will being served by the forces of capitalism which had defeated the Soviets without a shot being fired.

 _‘I’ve forty quid on Pompey,’_ Clinton told him with a smile. Arnold frowned, wondering why a Roman general and statesman was being evoked in this sorry context. He looked back at the television, hoping that someone had changed the program to a documentary, hoping a pop star would interrupt the goalless game to sell him a Pepsi. He thought of a home that he knew to be more imagination than address. He tried to envision of himself as another – as the everyman to whom he ascribed the morals to which he aspired. How grand, Arnold thought, to get up from an old couch or recliner to have a piss when match coverage faded into calls to commerce. How grand to grab a beer, down the half, and still have time left after to sit and reflect in the gentle glow of household products on offer which brand of toilet tissue one would stimulate the economy by purchasing in bulk. He thought of trips to Walmart with the intent of picking up a few things - thing that wound up filling a cart by the time they were tallied. He hoped the men wearing his flag on their sleeve were want for the same. The free market was an integral part of the viewing experience. It was a value that they were here to promote and defend.

Nine years later to the date, however, Arnold discovered the terrors of defeat and subjugation in the isolation of his cell. Namely, he had come to learn that soccer now existed in his beautiful country in a way that extended a few minutes of the grade-school physical education curriculum. It was appalling. The senator wondered if he could have done anything to aid the Feds in their takedown of the game’s governing body, if the investigation had come too late to be of any service to his own compatriots. Hearing the man who spoke in a Long-Island accent talk on his mobile about an association match he wished he had gotten to participate in was nearly as bad as arguing with the Jihadist he had met a few days before (cleverly disguised, though he may have been, by skin paler than his own and a shot glass filled with something their holy book forbade) over immigration policy and America’s lack of action in the so-said refugee crisis. It was all intellectual contagion. Arnold longed for the warfront. For the time when he could still imagine the forgotten man coming home from the coalmines to watch Monday Night Football with a cold American beer in hand. He looked at his leg - broken, bleeding, swelled with yellow bile that spoke of infection - longing to have another go at this immigrant ruining the American way of life.

As they all were.

What glories, Arnold tried to imagine, would his children later be able to sing about when they had a wall along the southern border, an isolationist approach to foreign politics and a tariff to shield them from pretty boys who sat on the side-lines for weeks on end due to hamstring injuries? Americans could play through concussions. Americans were great and if he had his way, their country would again match and meet its promise. He felt populism his patriotic obligation. He would see the American Dream restored. He had to.

That was, if he managed to survive.

“He probably considers soccer a sport. Whole fucking town seems too,” he tried to say to the apparition beside him. No words came out. Death failed to answer his unspoken complaint, which caused Arnold’s umbrage and irritation to fester.

The man guarding his cell was clearly an American, opinions on sport and evident sexuality notwithstanding. Beyond that, Arnold could not identify the voice he heard. From what he gathered from the bits of a telephone conversation that made it through wooden cellar doors changed shut, the poor soul did not even know what he was meant to guard and garrison. It was Sunday, the Lord’s day, and the sentinel would have preferred to spend his morning with his mates on a soccer field than standing guard for his landlord cum employer. This whole town seemed deprived of the Gospel and the equally sacred American Constitution. Arnold looked for death and began to again tally his sins. Was their time to atone? If this was his purgatory, fire and brimstone seemed the least of the horrors that might well await.

He could not see, he could not scream. There was rather Dantean to the whole of it, but void of Virgil and Beatrice he had only this bastardization of the silent majority to serve a guiding role. The man seemed to think that he was there to protect a cement mixer (which he suspected Rogers of lifting off a local competitor.) Arnold grunted at this idea and heard in his own desperate sounds the reason for the lie his unknowing prison guard promulgated. The senator’s ex-wife had remarked to him on the occasions they shared a bed that he sounded like a piece of ill functioning machinery when he snored. He remembered in the insult how wonderful it was to sleep beside a woman of flesh and blood. He suddenly felt lonely. He felt that he long had been. He tried to refuse the recognition.

Sunday, he focused. It was Sunday. He had been taken a prisoner of war on his own soil six days before. The now-sobbing sentinel, he gathered as the conversation progressed, had been held captive for far longer. Judging only on the stranger’s presence, Arnold reasoned that Rogers was not on the property. If he could call out, if he could alert the man to his existence, they could help each other escape this place they both named hell.

He opened his mouth again, if only to curse irony.

The same drugs that scraped together broken shards of his past, the same that lent him the illusion that he could win the battle, were those that prevented him from fighting.

He wanted to scream, if only for sake of the sensation.

Instead, Arnold turned back to the figure whom logic told him was not present.

Sometimes the shadow took the form of the forth horseman, sometime that of the burqa-clad cartelist he had known in better days.

He knew it to be a product of medication and memory, to be as tangible and threatening as the enemy fire he heard in the rain. Yet it was real because he needed it to be. It was real in the same sense as Peggy Shippen had been before her absence on Tuesday evening revealed her as a similar illusion.

Benedict Arnold studied the shadow that manifested in a blackened room. He felt lonely. He felt that he long had been. The concept that he found he could not ignore was bleaker than the reality of his imprisonment, the reality that he would either lose his right leg or it would take his life. Was that all Peggy had ever been, he wondered, a shadow of the sorrows he tried to shield himself from by standing in the spotlight?

No, Arnold tried to assure himself. He was not alone. He was not lonely. This particular vision of death and destruction was no governor’s daughter, but she was a friend to him when she felt like being one.

His throat was too dry to speak, yet they had been conversing nearly all morning.

Or maybe they had not. Maybe he had just imagined it.

He asked anyway.

“My voice?” she responded. “They say that is the first thing you forget about a person, and when we last met I still called you Lieutenant General.”

“I remember what yours sounds like,” he told her. This, he realised, was a lie. What he remembered was that her accent was a better match for her fingernails than it was for her costume. Suspicious as her hands had made him; their initial private exchange had still taken him by surprise.

It was common practice in Iraq to get intelligence reports from locals. Arnold had met hundreds of unfortunates hoping to exchange something they had heard in passing for the dream of having their asylum paperwork expedited and approved. This one had been different. Her clothing suggested Wahhabi ties, beliefs or sympathies; the information she brought was always related to the ways in which terror self-funded. He assumed she came form means, that she was the fourth or so wife of someone whose face he knew from a pack of playing cards printed with the faces of America’s foremost enemies in a war without end. If so, she lacked motive. Arnold was mistrustful of women as a rule, more so when they fell on either extreme end of exposed skin. Sluts and strippers, Holy sisters and Salafist spies surely all shared the same want to wrong and rob. He was an honest man; he made no exceptions.

The two had met several times prior in secret strategy meetings with men that outranked him and, curiously, under officers who served no secretarial role. In these she never spoke, relying on a translator whom she would sometimes correct. She was never spoken of by name useful as the intelligence had proven itself time and again. Arnold learned how to ask in Arabic if she sought sanctuary stateside. This, she met with a mirthless laugh he could almost still hear.

“Could it be that you have come to fear the Scottish people?” she now challenged in a voice Arnold could identify only as belonging to the relative south of same island to which she alluded.

“Fear? You mean because of Rogers?” Arnold snorted before pausing to reflect, “I’m afraid … I’m afraid that I’m six days in and already I’m starting to side with the enemy.”

“Stockholm Syndrome?” she perked up.

“Worse,” Arnold admitted. “Breaking the block and voting with the damned liberals.”

“That bad, hmm?”

“You have no idea. You hear that boy out there?”

“Is that Private Woodhull?” she asked.

Arnold shook his head. “No. I’ve never met him. Rogers has him standing out in the rain, guarding this godforsaken shack, or rather cellar or basement or … did you know the difference is legal rather than linguistic in the State of New York? Woodhull told me that. He studied law at one point. And of course, his father – sorry, I know this means nothing to you.”

“It is a cellar. It doesn’t meet the basic requirements for safe occupancy.”

“He told you, too?”

“You know I’m not here, Senator Arnold.”

No. She was a product of isolation. He knew this as she claimed he did. He asked anyway. “If you were purely a figment of my imagination, wouldn’t you speak to me in my own voice?”

“I didn’t know you had a particular interest in psychology,” she replied in an accent he had heard described as posh, seeming pleased with what he supposed she saw as progress. “Tell me … what about me frightens you so much?”

“You don’t,” Arnold told her honestly. “You remind me or war, or war reminds me of you. It comes as a comfort, more than anything else. Thinking I might be able to stand up, fight my way out of here. Come, Hewlett,” he teased with a twinge of hope. “Be the Enyo to my Ares once more. Let’s take this town.”

“Do you find that much differentiates dread and desire?” she inquired.

It was a strange question given its source. Arnold looked for her hands in the drapes of dark linen that covered her tall frame as though he hoped she might be holding the answer she sought from him.

He recalled telling her years ago that religious women did not paint their nails in this part of the world, seeing any altercation to one’s physicality as an attempt to dispute the Creator by making an adjustment on what was a masterpiece by definition of God as the Sculptor. ‘ _Find me a woman between Istanbul and Islamabad who doesn’t wax weekly,_ ’ she challenged, almost laughing. _‘Don’t believe anyone who would claim that women don’t all partake in and enjoy the same vanities.’_

‘Partake’ he would accept in her case upon seeing her unveiled. But ‘enjoy’?

The woman attributed her assets for what they were to plastic and padding, to mental illness masquerading as model beauty. It was blunt without being brutal; she seemed neither interested in Arnold’s assessment of her looks nor in her own. With equal unfeeling, she explained at some later point that she was involved in all sorts of trafficking and that she employed her highly specific expertise in assisting her government and its allies when dragooned into doing so. And why wouldn’t she? It was beneficial to the cartel of which she was a part to limit supply.

‘ _I’m not quite certain why the Royal Army thinks it has any grounds to underestimate me,_ ’ she confessed in a rare moment of falter that revealed her annoyance. ‘ _I have, after all, eliminated on my own initiative any profits from being made in importing drugs to Great Britain. I’ve begun to champion a substance abuse charity. Use is, as such, in decline on the island where it continues to rise in countries such as your own. Yet the Crown stations my closest friends to the front as though it supposes I am want for drive. As though it would bother me or tamper with the information I am able to provide._ ’

_‘It doesn’t?’_

_‘Why would it? We share the same talents – my mates and I. They are – by and large – being rewarded by swift promotion for feats of bravery they are forced into due to my presence. Anyway, was there not a certain honour in ancient warrior societies in being the first man over a wall?’_

She herself was not brave, Arnold decided upon hearing this. She could not face those who faced death. She bothered with local dress. ‘ _It is not for your benefit,’_ she told him distantly, _‘or mine._ ’

Though reasonably assured that the insultingly young aristocrat bought into her own given explanations, Arnold trusted her less after being shown a mask she identified as her face.  He was not certain he wanted to see it now, much as he felt he had to. Something was not right. She was far too engaged in their conversation, far too interested in his answers. He felt he knew her, which he knew was something she would never permit. Arnold looked for her hands. He looked for something identifying. There was no light in the room. He could not see her and she was not there. He knew this. He spoke.

“You are an arch-pragmatist, Enyo. I never knew you to be so … philosophic in any of your dealings.”

“I never knew you to be so self-aware,” she offered in exchange.

“So why force the posh accent?”

“You like hearing it,” she told him. “Why do you think that is?”

Arnold could not say even if he could identify its true source. It was warm and deep, rich without being thick. It spoke tomes in only its tone, all the wonders the world contained of which he was merely aware. Arnold did not know if he would describe the waltz these words danced as ‘like’ or ‘longing’ – if they might be better called ‘lonely.’ Lonely? He suddenly recognised it as being the pitch in which he read Peggy’s texts to himself. He had taken it from somewhere, but did not know to which battle he owed this glorious spoil.

It certainly was not Hewlett’s voice.

It was not Hewlett at all. If anything, the soft baritone belonged to death. How then, Arnold asked himself, dare it to sound so sweet?

“Doesn’t hurt the brand?” he asked, determined to make his enemy meet his eyes in a room he knew to be too dark to discern defining features of any sort.

“Why do you think that is?” Hewlett repeated, slightly harder than as the question had originally been asked.

“I don’t,” he lied. “Like the accent. Hate all of them. Moreover, I think I liked you as a person better before I heard you speak.”

She considered this for a time. “Before you had a reflection of yourself when you imagined my face, my portrait can’t possibly do it justice. This holds true for everyone – think of how online dating always results in disappointment.”

“Why can’t I see you? I know what you look like.”

“I’m not sure you do.”

“You don’t disappoint me … Peggy,” he tried. Hoped. Begged.

“Peggy? Are you sure?”

He was not. The only thing he felt with any certainty was that he was too old to be playing these kinds of games.

“I’m not ‘sure’ of anything,” Arnold shifted, thinking on another way to draw her out. Debate should do. “I’m considering betraying my cause. Do you hear that man up there? Lost his job and his insurance with it when he found out he had cancer. Within months, all of his savings were lost to COBRA and co-payments. Worked all his life, he did. Ended up ‘robbing’ a bank with a spray-painted squirt gun, pleaded guilty after being arrested on site and did hard time, forcing the state to pay for his chemo. What I mean to say is, Affordable Care Act or not, we are all stuck fronting premiums one way or another – except now, this man’s life is ruined. He lives here in this halfway house, works for the proprietor, can’t find another job due to his history as a violent offender, and can’t move out because your man Rogers would fire him if he did. Told him this morning that if he stays put he can move in with his boyfriend and still keep his construction job. That is who he is on the phone with. Man called Charles. Trying to convince him to stay stateside, though why anyone would is a mystery to my mind. America,” he sighed, “where small town criminals who can’t even write up a ransom demand hold public servants hostage in private cellars. They have fucking soccer here now, too. Whole world has gone to hell.”

“My man, you say?” she asked, gently stroking his cheek. Arnold took her hands to find they were not painted this time. She was shrouded in blackness but it was no longer dark.

Arnold knew the desert sun under which they stood to be his fever. Still, it felt real, and he felt his pulse slow. For the moment, he knew where he was. He felt at home. That was enough.

 

* * *

 

“Do you see that lieutenant-colonel?” she asked airily, pointing to a distant boy with his back turned. “He can’t see me. That is the reason for the theatre, poorly staged though it may be. Has to be … God, going on two years ago now that three servicemen were lost when I made a slight miscalculation. Now they have my old schoolmates taking command of the vanguard on all of these little missions to liberate our shared enemies from the poppy that feeds them.”

“These people aren’t eating bagels,” Arnold scoffed. If she could not bother herself to feign concern, neither would he.

“Most of the farmers aren’t eating at all,” she told him, again, it seemed, not quite as Lady Eleanor. This was not an uncaring assessment, not, at least, as Arnold heard it spoken. She sounded like Peggy, or rather, as he imagined Peggy might sound. He remembered shaking hands with the daughter of the then-governor of his state once at a fundraiser when she was but a girl. It had not made much of an impression. It was only these past few months in which he had begun to find her positively stunning – stimulated more by the questions she asked than the selfies she always found an excuse not to send. She was not real, Arnold told himself, and yet she had to be.

“That why you can’t look your friends in the eye when you send them to death?” he asked after a moment had passed in response to setting. He longed to again hear a beautiful voice he considered might not even be female at all but instead a compilation of art and natural elegance, of manners he did not have and a kind of intelligence to which he could never hope to aspire. It was an idea of all that he wished he could be. It was Peggy. Even if it was not. Even if the aspiration whatever it be named was as real as the sun that slowly bleached the camo he knew himself not to be wearing.

“Should I tell you the truth about men, Senator Arnold?” she teased. “They are - every single one of them - far too simple and vain to approach with even the suggestion of truth. Imagine I were to inform my former classmate over there of the sum of my experiences since last we parted. It is ‘ _poor thing!_ ’ It is ‘ _what could I have done to prevent this?_ ’ It is ‘ _my duty to protect her!_ ’ And how! If I were to excuse my actions to him or any other as fate, or, alternatively, as free will – my own, mind – men, all men, are still apt to inventing a narrative in which they might yet play saviour. It is shambolic. It is the same with you.”

“You could get out of this game. You are rich enough.”

“And you could help me, couldn’t you?” she purred.

Arnold did not answer. He did not like the one instinct whispered.

“Why can’t I see you?” he demanded. “Your friend has been dead for six years or more. We aren’t even here. We are not in Iraq.”

“You clearly still are,” she insisted, not taking note of the rest. “To answer your question though, is a fundamental of Freudian Psychoanalysis that you’ve adapted subconsciously. The psychiatrist is meant to sit behind the patient, as not to influence their responses to given impulses through unintended assessments offered through expression. You know what I look like, Arnold. You know because we have had this conversation before. Because you rung me up when you could not sleep and I told you -”

“It isn’t PTSD,” the senator insisted against what he had been told once by a researcher he knew in a professional capacity. “At home - Harrisburg or DC, I’ve never had anything like this,” he paused, pleaded. “Enyo … Am I going to die here?”

“Not in the desert,” she answered in a voice too beautiful for any siren.

Suddenly Arnold felt he could not stand.

“You are here because you would rather die fighting,” she told him. “Why don’t you?”

“Why are you here? Why you – specifically?” Arnold cringed as he a shot of pain shot through his injured leg. He looked at the hands he pressed up against it and saw blood. He looked at her hands and found no hint of red - blood, polish or otherwise.

“Because I am a manifestation of everything you are too afraid to admit to wanting.”

“Opioids?” he guessed.

“No.”

“Money?”

“Maybe,” she said slowly. Do you consider yourself jealous of a girl you would name the goddess of war and cruelty? Of her lord father, perhaps? Do you wish that you’d driven all of your sons mad in the same vain? That you had been present to do so? That they were off securing your investments through criminal activity rather than attending Ivies on your dime? That,” she teased, “oh, that must hurt -”

“I’d never want a daughter like you,” Arnold spat.

“You would date a girl younger than you think I am … If you’ll allow it, you know what I think you most covet? Why you associate me so strongly with a girl you met on a handful of occasions? It is this and this alone: You think ‘I’ could be happy living in a small flat on the bad side of some shit industrial town with him,” she pointed, pausing until the dream faded as all did in time. “I won’t. Of course. I’ll marry, or rather be married to some landed noble for geopolitical reasons … Or if I’m lucky, or if you are, I’ll be shot out here under the hot and splendid sun. But I _could have_ been happy with someone who squandered away his small wealth, who could never have approached my dowry even if he hadn’t. And that is crucial to you. By your account, you’ve since witnessed me sobbing, helpless as I watched him die. And ah, how you hate ‘me’ for it. You hate me more for a moment of weakness than all of the many you begrudge me too much to admit you see as strength. And do you know why that is, Senator Arnold? You think that no one would love you if they knew how much personal debt you were in. You want to believe it possible but you would rather die here than risk certainty. That is why you can’t scream, rather, why you won’t.”

She was right.

Accepting that, he found he could not accept the source.

Benedict Arnold considered for a moment that while he knew this to be true of the woman he imagined, she likely did not know or so much as suspect it of herself. She never spoke of love. She never spoke of anything in the sense of emotional capacity. She knew nothing of financial hardship. No one knew of his.

This was not real.

This was not memory.

They had been here before, had had a conversation much like this, but as Arnold recalled it, she had told him that had a coup d'état in the early part of the past century not kept her forefathers from a throne that had been theirs by blood right, Britain could have kept her colonies in check; that the conditions creating and feeding the war would never have been. She spoke of her friends and their gambling debts in the same detached and distant manner with which she evoked the dead. She spoke, Arnold knew, in a distinctively different British accent. They talked together of Tacitus and tactics, of the politics in places they had never been and would never go.

In the single meeting they had after her friends had been murdered and maimed by his mistakes, nothing had changed. She did not challenge him. She did not pose questions that did.

 _‘It is war. It is what happens,’_ she said to his condolences, and then, only vaguely. ‘ _I’m fine._ ’

Suffer bravely, Arnold had summarized for himself.

This was not real, yet he needed it to be.

“Peggy,” he pleaded, moving to lift her veil.

“You would rather die her than face certainty,” she insisted. Her voice felt like fire. Arnold found himself again in the cellar, her un-manicured nails digging into his open flesh, tearing the wound apart and his world along with it with it.

“Do you truly think it is brave to suffer? Do you not understand? You are going to die in here, Arnold!”

“Peggy,” he said aloud. Again. Louder and louder still. He screamed until she revealed herself at long last.

He screamed another name altogether, one, he only later realised, had always lingered on the tip on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

There were days John Robeson missed the way things were on the inside.

Sexuality, for instance, was not politicised in prison, one was guaranteed three warm meals a day, and, above all, if a brawl broke out it likely did so within view. The rematch, at least, was bound to. There was always a rematch. A score to settle. A punch to throw.

Here, things were governed by norms that went against nature.

Robeson did not much rate Hewlett as a coach or Simcoe as a captain, but evidently between them they had had the sense to understand that Bye Week was unlikely to ever walk away with another win against Middle County. Neither was pressing the league to reschedule. Though he saw the reason behind this action he could not help but to feel twice cheated. Along with fellow Johns Maglev and Byrd, Robeson had been on his way out that morning when Rogers called to him from the garage, offering an ultimatum. If he played sentinel as opposed to sweeper today, he could leave the house and keep his job. Robeson agreed instantly with a single thought – if his boss held to his word, which he suspected he would, he could keep Charles Joyce in America and at his side.

Eight hours later, he was beginning to suspect that he had made the wrong decision in babysitting a stolen cement mixer. He had missed the game of the season and the fight of the century. He had long since missed his chance at true love. The day having made that clear, he missed the fallacy that such happiness existed, at least for the likes of him.

He missed the inside.

People who had never done hard time imagined prison as being void of its passage. They imagined that days, hours, minutes were without relevance, each akin to the one that proceeded it. But time, Robeson would argue, had far more meaning in relative isolation. Every moment that passed brought one closer to a court date, a prole hearing, an attempt at civil rehabilitation. It gave one hope; it gave one something to do that seemed worthwhile by comparison. He had spent his time upstate obtaining his GED; he had spent the better part of the last few hours switching between the same three apps, wondering if the occasional grumbling he heard was result of construction equipment or his empty stomach, wondering when Rogers would return.

Evidently, no one had heard anything from the Scot since the match ended. No one had any interest in his whereabouts when it seemed likely that Simcoe would stay the night in jail and Appleton had booked himself a ticket to Cuba in the form of a ‘Wenger Out’ banner he had brought to the protest that broke out at Peggy Shippen’s press conference. Charles, his Charles, had asked the team’s absent Americans in the group chat how this ill-fated act of mockery warranted such concern. It didn’t, Anna Strong replied, followed by a queue of question marks. ‘ _Ben Tallmadge has been spending too much time on Wikipedia trying to connect soccer to organized terror’_ , Jordan Akinbode wrote. _‘Wait, I’ll phone him.’_

They had yet to hear back from the striker who had effectively told them all to ‘suck it’ a few days prior.

Robeson could not have cared either way.

He himself had not written anything in response to this inquiry. He had gotten in an argument with his boyfriend that morning, something they were both keen to ignore for the time being. It was too stupid an issue to expose the cracks in their foundation for all to see.

Despite the outcome, Hewlett’s tactic against the league’s top scoring team had been to park the bus - to run a hard defence with the hopes of winning with limited possession or forcing Middle County into a draw. It was dull football that Joyce was of the mind he, as a defender, needed to be there to see through.

>> _How can you miss a game against our_

 _biggest rival?_ <<

Joyce had demanded.

>> _Middle County has no rivals._ <<

Robeson insisted. He received no immediate reply.

_> >To be fair I did not think we were playing them. _

_How can you not be happy about this? Just give me_

_today – we can finally move in together._ ♥ ♥ ♥  <<

It took Joyce eight minutes to answer. When he did, it was not what Robeson expected, nor it was not what he had begun to fear. Not in as many words, at least.

>> _Simcoe and Woodhull just got into a fist fight!!!_ <<

>> _Seriously?_ <<

>> _Well, no. Almost though. It was madness._ <<

>> _Charles, what about my moving in?_ <<

>> _You should really get down here. Team needs you._

 _We can talk after the match. In person._ <<

They had not spoken since.

John Robeson felt cold out in the rain, felt he would catch one if he was made to stand outside much longer. He would then be out until after Easter, but at least, he consoled himself, he would not have Simcoe’s anger to contend with should he miss match day or training due to illness.

He missed prison. He missed time having a meaning. The minutes that passed out here meant only that Rogers had not returned. Robeson hated not knowing how much longer he was sentenced for. He guessed that Charles Joyce had taken an offer in India, that, or he was no longer open to the one Robeson had finally realised after years of trying. After playing out every way of broaching the dreaded conversation; after looking at his bank statement and calculating how long he could support them both while his boyfriend looked for another job; after writing Anna privately, asking if she knew if extra paperwork needed to be filed if one wanted to marry a foreign resident; after deciding it was all for naught, John Robeson called the only man he believed had ever truly loved him, crying before the words came out.

Joyce spoke sweetly. He told him he would be there within the hour. He would bring take away from the good Chinese place where everything on the menu was cheaper because a few months back a dentist who had somehow contracted Ebola had eaten Chow Mein in a dining area the restaurant had since closed. He would bring an umbrella and they could picnic together in the dark and sing in the rain. When Rogers came back, they could pack up his room. They could spend the night together. They would figure things out.

But three hours had since passed without Charles Joyce or General Tao.

He gave no apology or explanation, instead texting over the group chat that Appleton had been arrested, that Appleton was all over The Daily Mail’s website and that it’s editor had again taken to opening fire on some singer over Twitter.

>> _Think about how good the next album is_

 _going to be though!_ <<

Someone on the team wrote back.

He did not care if it was. Rogers did not let anyone touch the radio in his work truck and Robeson didn’t go to clubs. He hadn’t even when he was young and handsome enough for the outing to perhaps prove itself a draw – drinks and anxious, heightened self-doubt traded for sex and goodbyes said before breakfast. He had no use for pop stars. Robeson had, however, half a mind to go to DeJong’s but that, too, was not an option, business having closed for some dumb reason or another.  Probably, he reasoned with a sudden resentment, because Anna had a rich new boyfriend and needed a job that fit the new social status she enjoyed on his arm. To Robeson’s mind, she was no better than the rest of trailer trash this town seemed to litter, but she had opportunities as well the educational means to exploit them. She had a boyfriend who loved her for reasons Robeson personally could not fathom. Anna Strong was not pretty, nor funny, nor very interesting on her own merits. Thanks to this latest turn in her tumultuous love life, however, he did not even have a place to grab a beer to take away his sting of rejection.

It was not resentment. Resentment was simple. It was an appropriate end to a series of small catastrophes. His therapist had checked himself into rehab; Anna, admittedly, would have made a decent enough substitute, whatever she had on tap would have made up the difference. It was a bad week, Robeson bemoaned, for his entire social network to be making moves towards self-improvement. He needed the people they were as opposed to who they were striving to be. He needed the familiarity he feared losing.

He desperately needed someone to talk to, a friend to listen to if not lift him from his sorrows. John was drenched, starved, and Charles was avoiding him.

They had been having problems for some time.

Charles would soon be made redundant thanks to the same forces of globalization that had brought him into John’s life in the first place. He had stopped attending AA meetings around the time that his lover had stopped putting on the pretence that he was looking for another job within the city.  Fights had followed - the natural progression of cherished things ending too abruptly.

Joyce could not stay and Robeson could not leave, fine though he felt with the idea of beginning anew. He had a criminal conviction. No country would grant him a visa. He was stuck in ways it seemed applied to no one else.

He missed prison where hopes were too distant to ever become disappointments.

A vehicle pulled up onto the yard. It was not Joyce. It was not Rogers. Robeson was not surprised.

“Woodhull!” he greeted, forcing cheer. “No chance you brought any of those eggs -”

“Not today,” Abe dismissed him. “Hey, Rogers still isn’t back, is he?”

“Sorry,” he shrugged.

Robert Rogers was something of a surrogate for Richard Woodhull and, perhaps, for Abe’s wife Mary as well. It was not any of Robeson’s business, and normally he would not be tempted to ask, but having that morning missed the only interesting thing to happen in the backwater of Setauket since Hewlett had stuck a dull blade into Simcoe’s breast an autumn past, he said, “Heard you got into a fight this morning. That why you are here? Hoping Rogers’ll teach you how to throw a punch?”

“What?” Abe frowned. “N-no. Not exactly. Listen I need to get something from the cellar. You should … you should really go inside. I’ll handle -”

Robeson put his hands up. “Can’t. I promised Rogers I would not leave this post until he returned.”

“What did he say, exactly,” Abe questioned in a tone reminiscent of his failed attempt of legal studies. Robeson did not answer. In truth, he was not sure and would not have been even if he had not been drowning his impending loss the night before in a bottle of wine Dr André probably would not be stopping by to enjoy with his beloved enemy anytime soon.  

Robeson was not entirely sure of anything the Scot said to him or anyone else. Robert Rogers was more mime than man, his impossible accent failing to dilute to comprehensible even after twenty odd years spent stateside. Every conversation was a game of charades with only three possible conclusions – that he thought John André owed him money, that he wanted to know if anyone had thought to record Ice Road Truckers for him, or that he was threatening to dismantle everything you ever held dear if you dared deviate from his latest half-baked plan.

For John Robeson, it was the third option more often than not.

Robeson could not wait to get away from him, away from the halfway house he had spent the better part of the past six years, regardless of Joyce was around to reward his sacrifices. Like Abe though he did, he was not about to step aside. He had been waiting outside for eight hours as a breeze turned into a drizzle that turned into a rain. He watched the younger Woodhull twitch and reasoned that could wait out this latest paranoid collapse and whatever patriotic palaver it contained.

“Please, just, turn a blind eye. Five minutes. I would not ask if it were not important.”

“Abe, look it is nothing personal – but this is my life. This is all it will ever be if I back down -”

“John!” he heard. He blinked. Abe had not spoken.

“What the hell are you two doing?” he demanded as he glanced at the cellar doors behind him, hearing the cry repeated.

“You have to let me in there,” Abe insisted. “Just go. Give me the key and go.”

Robeson gave him a hard look before turning to unlock the door in an awkward diagonal off the side of the house for himself.

 

* * *

 

“Let me see you,” he begged. He had forgotten what Peggy looked like. She never sent photographs when he asked. He could not trust what he could not see, and yet this was all he had. This, or a loneliness that threatened to claim him if his death was so reluctant to show her face.

“I’m not real, Benedict,” she repeated. “I never have been. But this is.”  

None of it was. None of it could be. Lies were evil yet her voice was so inviting he might well name it allure.

He heard voices from outside calling him back from abyss.

“Benedict you need to call for help. It may be our only chance at reuniting,” she told him softly as she turned away. He closed his eyes. He understood. This was not his final front. There were other wars to fight. There were always other wars.

“I have to save Private Woodhull,” he said, finally recognising someone he was certain of, accepting the responsibility of his new command.

“ _Private?_ Benedict, look at where you are.”

The room was nearly as dark as the mantel she wore. Back turned as she listen against the door, he glimpsed her blonde hair gathered in a messy braid that fell only just past her shoulders. She was as beautiful as he had always imagined. She remained a figment of his imagination. A lie he told himself willingly.

“Your hair, you cut it?” he inquired, knowing from his limited experience with courtship that women liked it when one commented on such things.

“I’ve been growing it out for a few years.”

“It suits you,” he answered without hearing. She did not respond. He tried anew.

“I have to save Woodhull,” he said.

“Tell me, do you fear being defenceless, or do you fear letting another man be the hero in this part of your narrative?”

Recognition consumed him. Arnold felt at once euphoric, elated and fully let down.

“John?” he gasped. “It has been you all along, hasn’t it?”

“It doesn’t make a difference, does it?” the figure asked with a self-pleased half smile. “No. And that scares you as well, but aren’t we all afraid of the familiarity we crave?”

Arnold wondered if love stories could have sad endings.

He wondered if he had lost the plot to his own.

He remembered meeting John André – pretty, prissy, posh, the life of the sorts of parties he had never personally attended. He did not like him but he found himself intrigue by the things he said and the words he used. His handshake, if he recalled things as they were rather than as he wanted them to be, was firmer than he would have expected from one who presumably spent his days asking troubled teens of a certain privilege how they felt.

He thought of the long-dead lieutenant colonel trying with what little remained of his right hand to wipe the tears away from a woman whom Arnold presumed he may have wanted on some level. He had used his last breath delivering an ill-timed joke; had they told her about El Nino? Was that why she was so terribly upset? The girl had forced a smile. Neither of them spoke of anything substantial in the final moments they would share. Maybe there was something in the idea of death being preferable to certainty.

He thought of the man he had sat next to at the bar a few nights back, when he had become certain that Peggy was not going to show up, when he paradoxically feared leaving, letting her arrive to the disappointment he felt. He explained this to the lonely heart he sought comradery in, listening to him, in turn, lament that he should have lent his old friend money, that he should have married him himself rather than looking on while this friend wed the woman with whom the man had long been completely infatuated. It would be different, he had said, if he thought they loved each other. He would be happy for them. Arnold was not convinced. He was not sure the man fully trusted in his own stated assessment either.

He thought of Private Woodhull, the only man in Setauket he had come to trust had his interests in mind, fiddling with his wedding ring when his hands were not otherwise engaged. He loved his wife and he didn’t, he told him. He was worried that in trying to protect her he had put her at risk. She was cheating. He wished he had the courage to end things before they got worse. Staying felt at times as impossible as leaving. There were days he wished she would walk out. Arnold only nodded. His own wife had faxed over a divorce agreement before his final tour had ended. He signed it. Just as he had so many death notes prior.

No. There was no difference between death and certainty. Neither had anything to do with love. Love, Arnold thought, was the quick inhale one took when upon receiving a text message from someone who challenged and engaged their heart, it was holding on to the same air as they read. It was relief. It was the terrible understanding of one’s own human limits and the euphoria inherent in the concept of acceptance. That one could be loved for what they were and what they lacked. It was ambivalence. At least, that was what John André would call it.

Could it be? It could not, yet it was the only plausible explanation. André loved him but feared acceptance. ‘Peggy’ as he wrote her was far too elegant, intelligent and an intriguing for a typical undergraduate. No. She sounded like André. She reminded him of the grounds the doctor had given when he had awoken him in the middle of the night because he could not close his eyes. She reminded him of the feeling he had when he shook André’s hand, a rush he could identify but was hesitant to name.

There was a different sort of delirium, he knew, when drugs had run their course. There were no apparitions or delusions; there was only the duality of physical anguish and desperate attention, a single thought repeated in a thousand tones as a means of distraction. Arnold called out for the ghost he thought he knew. He screamed, of only for sake of the sensation.

 

* * *

 

“What have you done?” Robeson accused, pointing the flashlight Rogers kept on the top step at the supposed cement mixer. Even seated, the man seemed as large and heavy as any piece of machinery found on a construction site. He writhed as he called to him, screaming in an agony, the source of which was easily identified.

“It is okay, I’m here,” he said, confused at how this stranger knew his given name. There was no time to ask. He turned back to Abe and handed him his keys. “I’m guessing there is a reason you haven’t called an ambulance?”

“Do you know who that is?” Abe gaped.

“No, though he seems to know me,” Robeson bit his lip. He had not had many relationships of any sort in prison, having spent half his sentence in hospital. He could not imagine anyone from the inside would seek him out, though the man certainly had the physique to suggest an extended stay in a state-given suite. He thought back to his days on a deep-sea fishing vessel, certain he would remember the man if they knew one another from an alternate nowhere.

“John, please, please don’t go. I need you, I’ve always needed you,” he sobbed. Robeson would have surely remembered someone if such a context had ever existed for him. He had been with Charles Joyce for four years. He never heard words like ‘need’, ‘please’, or ‘stay’.

“Listen, Abe, in the bathroom upstairs we have a first aid kit. I need you to bring it to me. Grab a towel, something he can bite into while I work – I can’t give him anything for the pain. Aspirin and alcohol both thin the blood and he has clearly already lost too much. If you can’t call an ambulance, can you at least call Dr Wakefield? Maybe go pick something up from Uncle Lewis?”

“Do you know who that is?” Abe asked with wide eyes.

It occurred to Robeson that he did not much care. “Someone who is going to die unless his wounds are treated,” he hissed as he moved to lay the injured on his back, responding to the man’s resistance with soothing sounds and assurances the he was there. That he was not leaving. “What the actual fuck, Woodhull?”

Abe wavered but he did not move. “Do you know what you are doing?”

“I spent twenty years on the open sea. I’ve seen worse. I’ve the first aid training to handle- why are you standing here, go!” he demanded.

Abe shook his head. “Help me. Help me move him before Rogers get back. John that … that is Benedict Arnold.”

“Who?”

“Don’t you watch the news?”

“Not since we entered election fever as a nation … what does that have to do – GO!”

“Okay,” Abe relented.

He turned back to the handsome man whose name he had just learned, who spoke his own with pleas of passion such that Robeson had never otherwise enjoyed.

“Is it still a love story if the ending’s a sad one?” Arnold asked him.

“Believe me, whomever you mistake me for would be a fool to lose you and I won’t let that happen,” Robeson swore, squeezing his hand. Abe’s hurried steps ceased. The flashlight he carried crashed to the basement’s cement floor from the top of the stairwell, its glow extinguished in the freefall.

“Whaur dae ye hink ye ur gonnae?” a gruff voice asked.

John Robeson was not sure of what was being said between Rogers and Woodhull; he understood in the tone, however, that his landlord would never let him leave.

There were days when he missed prison. There, he had not had a life sentence.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve gotten a bit loquacious, so let's just get to it:
> 
>  **Scaevola** : a possibly mythical Roman youth renowned for his bravery. With the approval of the senate, he snuck into an Etruscan camp with the intent on assassinating Clusian King Porsena who in 508 BC laid siege to Rome. Unfortunately he mistook the king’s scribe for Porsena himself and targeted the wrong man, leading to his capture before he could achieve his objective. In defeat, he told the Etruscans that his body and life meant nothing to him (as a brave Roman) and demonstrated this by way of sticking his right hand into fire, earning him a cognomen meaning ‘left handed’. The king was so impressed by this action that he let him return to Rome. The speech offered by the unnamed solider in the beginning of this chapter was lifted form **Livy**. Scaevola also appears in Dante’s **Divine Comedy** which this chapter also loosely referenced.  
>  Ban Tarleton did lose half of his right hand in the American Revolution, something that became its own kind of sexy in the realm of 18th century populist politics but unfortunately did not make its way into any of his portraits (oil paintings and political cartoons alike) so I don’t have a good reference image to offer. If you want equally gross to look at, check out the portrait of him made later in life. He aged in a way that makes him look like everyone’s stern uncle, the one you wish you were not obligated to invite to dinner. Fuck, I’m not even white and I’ve an uncle who looks that way. XP
> 
>  **Ares** : in Greek mythology, the God of war, usually depicting its savage elements. In the fourth series of TURN, Benedict Arnold refers to himself in this context, asking Clinton to provide him with Phobos and Deimos, his sons that accompanied him into battle (by which he meant funds to raise an army.) I changed it here to **Enyo** , Ares’ sister/lover/whatever, a chariot driving war goddess associated with the destruction of cities.
> 
>  **Pompey** : Sorry, Arnold, we are not talking about **Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus** here, but rather **Portsmouth Football Club** who went on to win the **FA Cup** in 2008. In the semi-final against **Manchester United** at **Old Trafford** , **Harry Redknapp** knocked **Sir Alex** out of the cup race for the third time, so even though it was an upset, I’m struggle to even estimate what a bet of forty quid would return, but I am guessing Clinton went “home” happy that night.
> 
>  **Burgoyne** : oh boy, an 18th century English dramatist whose most famous work was surrendering his entire army of 6,200 men at **Saratoga** , a turning point in the American Revolution. You probably knew that. You also probably know that nothing gets me hot for history like economic intrigue so here is this: the most interesting thing about this bloke, to my mind anyway, was his financial dealings. Mainly, he supported himself by buying and selling commissions as though they were stocks for his entire career and actually got away with the scheme. Tja … unfortunately initiative was all he really had to speak for him, but I will always applaud shady as fuck. ;)
> 
> Haha, just kidding! We can all hold our applause. Which actually brings me to **FIFA** , football’s governing body. It is a corrupt organization that was stupid enough to trade in USD - prompting a 2015 FBI investigation and process that lead to Sepp Blatter’s resignation. God bless America!
> 
>  **El Nino** : Spanish striker **Fernando Torres** transferred from **LFC** to **Chelsea** in January 2011 for a British record transfer fee of £50 million. Liverpool fans took the betrayal particularly hard (in terms you’ll be familiar with, kind of like Washington after Arnold declared for England in the series we all know and love) except … you know, on Twitter and inherently hilarious. Torres did not enjoy the same success at **Stamford Bridge** , scoring only 20 goals in 110 appearances and now plays for **Atlético** which um … if you only know one club out of Madrid … it (probably) is not that one. Can’t update you much further because I haven’t heard a single report on **La Liga** in months that isn’t intertwined with Spanish politics, none of it to do with ‘Wenger Out’ protests … yet.
> 
> But that is not the part I want to talk about. Oh no! And I am guess you feel the same way about this chapter. Drop me a comment. Hit that Kudos button. Goddamn, hit it twice because as much as I have bored you with football news in these opening chapter notes, I want it pointed out that H+S is edging up on its second anniversary and I have _strongly resisted_ every temptation to mention or even elude to one José Mourinho to date. Do you know how hard that has been? How punable it is? Think of all you’ve been spared. Hit the Kudos button. And _please_ come talk to me about Arnold/André. I have wanted this so bad for so long I just …


	35. The Laureate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abe attempts to reason with Rogers. Aberdeen devises a means of simultaneously protecting her friends and ensuring her ambitions. Mary confesses her love, Simcoe can only admit to a contradiction. Tarleton faces his own fears after reviewing André’s research on the same topic. Ben seeks evidence of collusion. Hewlett inadvertently divulges a secret that could prove his undoing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A theme that finds itself repeated throughout this chapter is miscalculations of character. Ladies and gentlemen, not only do I write around this idea but I fear I may well embody it. Despite all of the evidence I might have otherwise gathered over the past two years, I fancied that I would be able to achieve brevity in a way that allowed me to end this blasted bridge in a single update. Alas. I reached the arbitrary number of words I’ve decided is excessive long before I finished editing. Having found a convenient cut off, I’ll just have to agonise for another week or so before introducing the canon characters I’ve been dying to bring in, and for that (and this) I beg your patience.
> 
> I normally take this opportunity to joke about potentially disturbing material, but low and behold, there is a line in here dealing with the mistreatment of children. It is brief, blunt and could prove upsetting. The warnings you are used to seeing (murder, blackmail, extortion, partisan politics, collusion, association football, heartbreak, rejection, bad coffee, recreational drug use, obscure literary references, unpopular analysis, language and _length_ ) still apply – but here is a treat! I’ve managed to allude to Anatolia without offering a critique of constitutional reforms. And they said it couldn’t be done …
> 
> Um. A final caution before we continue – there is a death on the force. It is not explicit, but you might want to emotionally prepare yourself for that blow as well. Cheers!

Abe Woodhull wished he had Samuel Tallmadge with whom to stack his side. He wished that whatever alcohol that periodically induced Robert Rogers to imagine the presence of the boy he had slain on an old country road a decade prior was on hand to give him some natural advantage in negotiating with his employer’s weaknesses both hidden and apparent. Rogers, however, was no more interested in drinking an ale that evening as the two sat at his old, un-level dining room table than he was in discussing the necessity of moving Benedict Arnold to better quarters.

“Ah hae tae drife tae Philomena’s tha' moorns nicht – early. Park mah truck as lang as th' polis ur around,” The Scot said to Abe’s offer to grab something from the cupboard or cabinet. Rogers had not reacted to finding Robeson frantically tending to Arnold’s injuries by inflicting more as Abe had feared. He had barely shouted, barking only that Abe ought to retrieve the first aid kit as he had been instructed, repeating what the former fisher said as though he meant to commit it to memory while the poor tenant administered emergency care. Robeson had left the house half an hour before, taking one of the cars in Rogers’ garage to the far side of town with the twenty dollars their boss had given him to negotiate a purchase. Abe hoped that Rogers planned to partake in the weed his recovering alcoholic was meant to return with, that it would create a place in his mind where reason might prevail. Abe Woodhull had thus far failed in that respect.

“As long as the police are around we ought to at least consider moving Arnold,” he argued, much as he had for the past hour. “Jordan is going to be in Albany for six weeks. He sent the lads and me a text last night saying we were free to use his new home if we needed a place to crash after the gig. I know where the spare key is hidden – he will be none the wiser to Arnold being there and it is not as though he is going to visit at the weekend … uh, he is going through an ugly break up. You know how he isolates himself when he is in a bad way.”

Rogers shook his head. “Ye bin roon tae his new place yit?” he challenged. “Abit tois blocks frae th' Brooklyn station an' thee frae th' District Attorney’s haem. It is th' warst place tae keep heem. Whit if he shoods gie it? Ye said yerself ye don’t troost th' polis.”

“Caleb does,” Abe swallowed.

“Caleb Brewster trusts th' polis?” Rogers laughed.

“He trusts Tallmadge.”

“’At won’t lest. Hoo mony fowk yoo’ve seen naked dae ye troost ance th' charm has worn aff? We baith ken yer mucker Brewster ends things afair gettin' tae th' grottie introduction bits.”

It was true, though in this instance Abe did not know if it was relevant to his personal concerns. His best friend had a genetic illness which his uncle was in the later stages of; his relationships as such they were never lasted for more than a few months, ending abruptly and without stated reason before any major holiday. He may have once had a conversation with a partner who, weeks after meeting Lewis, decided that he did not want to wind up in a situation where he would have to care for Caleb, effectively ending things between them in such cold terms. Caleb might well have only heard these words in his head, terrified that he may one day not be able to care for himself.

Easter, Abe remembered, fell early this year. In two weeks, he would be hiding eggs for Thomas while Mary made altogether too much food for four people. Caleb would have a beer with Uncle Lewis, Anna, DA Smith, Hank if he flew in from Stanford, and likely Hewlett now as well; he would entertain those present with a dramatic narrative of bureaucratic incompetence of the sort that defined his nine-to-five. Ben, as all the boys who had come before him, would not warrant a mention for Caleb could not bring himself or others to laugh over such matters.

But two weeks, Abe thought, could prove an eternity in a town where nothing ordinarily transpired. In the time that separated Setauket from springtime and rebirth, he could trust Caleb’s intuition would be unclouded by an inevitable he would never give Tallmadge an opportunity to refute. He told this to Rogers who in turn only shook his head.

“Half ay onie relationship yer ever gonnae be in exists only in yer wee heed, troost is th' first hin' tae gang. Swatch at ye an' yer guidwife. Gie yer answer thes morn? Didn’t need Brewster muckin' abit efter aw, did ye?”

“Leave Mary out of this,” Abe warned. The words stung. He did not love his wife as he should, he loved the illusions his marital status created. He hated himself for it, and he hated hearing her name or distinction pass through the lips of a man who had threatened to harm her.

In all the ways he had imagined his marriage ending, Mary had never been at fault. He did not know if it was fair to blame her here. Abe did not like Simcoe, but he did not know him – those who did, Mary, Hewlett, the other lads he captained on his Sunday-league side, the people he knew back in London, all adored him enough to stage a protest demonstration following his arrest. And why wouldn’t they? Simcoe had been there to protect Mary when Abe had abandoned her in the car park knowing Baker was police, afraid of getting booked for something minor that might lead the force back to Arnold. Mary was not entirely at fault for what had transpired in place of commitment, but reagardless of with whom blame lied, Rogers should neither evoke nor involve her. Abe wondered aloud if she and Thomas would still be used as bargaining chips if he were to file for separation.

“Go haem tae yer guidwife Abraham, afair someain else dae,” the Scot repeated with a smirk.

“The charm will wear off,” Abe said of his rival, not entirely trusting his borrowed assessment. At this, he rose from the table and pulled two beers out of Rogers’ refrigerator, one for his nerves and one with the hope his host was hospitable enough to join him for a drink. His employer frowned when the beverage was placed before him but clinked glasses all the same. He spoke for a while without value over some documentation he had seen at four in the morning over eighteenth century farming. Abe wondered if the few programmes The History Channel put out having to do with the past were of any particular interest to anyone else, or if Rogers himself had simply had it on in reaction to the hour.

“You know Hewlett is planning some door-to-door action,” Abe eventually interrupted his boss in a long-winded assessment of agricultural techniques from antiquity, more of which, he reasoned, no mere mortal could take. “He hopes that someone will see something that will point the police to Arnold. He says he and Simcoe worked it out mathematically; Arnold could not have left Setauket. If they know that, I would at least imagine Tallmadge does as well. We have to move him. I told Hewlett I would help but I can only lead him astray for so long.”

Rogers nodded slowly.

“I’ll hae a hink oan it. Nae Akinbode’s hoose.”

“No one is looking there.”

“Hewlett is pure tryin' tae fin' th' senatur? 'at is jist barry, isn’t it?” Rogers repeated, making calculations of a different sort. Abe considered all he knew of Edmund Hewlett. Perhaps it was the fault of Whitehall – as was the case with his wife, father, and the au pair who lived with them, Abe felt he understood very little about boarder who shared his walls. He knew, however, that Hewlett had very strong opinions, one of which he had been on about of recent involving statistics. Factoring for human variables designated the equations as belonging to social science rather than mathematics, so he had told him. Abe, formally disinterested, suddenly found himself sympathetic to this view, wondering how much of the assessment was born from Hewlett’s sitting at a bar with Robert Rogers, whom logic seemed to defy.  

“He is a suspect. He wants to clear his name,” he offered on the foreign tennant’s behalf. There was some irony in the fact that the man to whom he held so many feelings on contention was the closest thing to an ally Abe could find. Hewlett had even gone so far as to extend him an offer of friendship, remaining civil and cordial when Abe had responded with an attack. He was likely sitting in jail now, trying to do the right thing, certain in his assessment of what defined that abstract. Abe pitied him. He envied him. He felt he should not have been so quick to condemn him for the supposed sins of other individuals.

Rogers continued to laugh jovially. “He’ll jist dig himself deeper intae whatever hole he’s got himself in an' ol’ Robbie Rogers haur will profit aff th' dirt.”

“I hate when you do that,” Abe commented, crossing his arms.

“Mix metaphors?”

“Refer to yourself in the third person. Anyway, why Hewlett?” he squinted, trying to understand Rogers insofar as could be managed.

“Yoo’d hae jist bin a wee lil at th' time, but afair Ah cam tae thes coontry thaur was a lot ay gab abit his most noble ay hooses.”

 “See that is the thing I don’t get,” Abe frowned. “If Hewlett is as important as everyone implies, why hasn’t he any protection? Body guards, lawyers, the like?”

“Who says he doont?”

“Evidence to the contrary. The man nearly died, he has been arrested, beaten beyond recognition sometime in the last few days – what more do you want?”

“Ah want tae bide time. Ah am sure someain is meant tae be providin' security. Th' Hewletts ne'er dae anythin' overtly. We will bide, fin' it fa, an' 'en make contact. Figure it fa tae blackmail.”

“Blackmail,” Abe swallowed.

“Weel th' us government isn’t in th' wey o pay up ur they? Noo 'at they got it intae their heids 'at we ur terrorists wi' whom they don’t negotiate.”

Abe had other theories on why no reward had been offered. He knew from the moments he spent with Arnold when the senator was not absorbed with unseen shadows that Washington wanted to pass a new defence package he had been responsible for drafting. Though the details remained vague to him, he gathered that it would overshadow the Patriot Act in terms of asking Americans to trade their civil liberties for abstract securities in a reaction to the global political climate. The bill had stood no chance of becoming law, but thanks to a media interest in Arnold’s disappearance demonstrations were being planned and taking place all over the country in support of his proposal. In addition, Abe knew from Hewlett that Europe saw the economic disruption the senator’s absence created as an opportunity to further a trade deal that could serve to reduce tensions between member states in the banking union.

Arnold was missing because no one wanted to find him.

Everyone was profiting politically and economically from his evanescence, everyone – as Abe saw it, except for the American people.

“As Ah waur sayin',” Rogers continued, “th' Hewletts hae a reported history ay payin' up. Ah don’t ken if yoo’d graced th' earth at th' time, but rumoor was 'at th' owner ay a majur newspaper back in Britain uncovered somethin' abit th' Hewletts 'at coods undo th' whole ay whatever designs they hud. Booght heem aff, they did. Gae heem twintie percent ay th' company. Fur heem, it weren’t enaw. Got restless, threatened tae gab, suffered a stroke afair he coods.”

“So your brilliant plan is to blackmail a bunch of oligarchs who you think guilty of murder once you figure out what gang is meant to be providing Edmund’s security?” Abe gaped. His own brother had been gunned down accidently in a gang related shooting. He was reluctant to extend an open invitation to such calamity and doubted Rogers fully knew what he was suggesting. “Do you even care what happens to Arnold? You could die yourself!”

“Aye. But Eddie is a discredit tae his nam an' a' fowk knows it. I’m nae lookin' fur a lot. Jist enaw tae gie me ben mah retirement, up tae Alaska. Ah can brin' th' senatur if he wants tae come. We can gang ice fishin'. He seems apt at stayin' still fur extended periods. I’d invite ye alang, but I’d fash yerse yoo’d gie jittery up thaur.”

Abe considered that the Belgian beer had been offered in error. He often struggled to understand what Rogers was saying, now, he was fairly confident that the man had lost sight himself. “I don’t think Edmund Hewlett had anything to do with the disappearance,” he stated flatly, as calmly as he could manage.

Rogers smiled. “But Hewlett thinks Simcoe did an' accordin' tae André fa studies these things 'at is his Achilles tendon.”

“What?” Abe asked certain no answer could satisfy this latest queue of senseless words.

“Ah, don’t quiz me oan it, bairn. Psychiatrist, heed mince. It is aw borrowed Greek.”

“It is a really bad plan.”

“Ain whit is yoors, Abe?” Rogers barked. “Keep movin' heem indefinitely? Hiner ye aye hae at leest a body mukker it ay toon?”

 

* * *

 

Arrogance and ambition were separate abstracts. Aberdeen Declesias felt this reality was sorely lost on her rivals, on her critics and on her present company. Peggy Shippen had called her self-absorbed. John Graves Simcoe was in the process of challenging their combined presumptions and prejudice. Although she knew it to be annoying to her boss judging by the manner in which the small woman pressed her pale lips together simultaneously managing both pout and sneer, the au pair was happy to play into these sorry misconceptions for the moment. After all, she was already winning the debate. The larger game, she came to realise, depended on how long she could keep the others distracted.

She had seen her new housemate at The Newsroom two nights prior, cuddled up between John André and a beverage Abigail had told her he had gone to rehab to combat. She could have sworn she had glimpsed them both at the Culper Ring concert the night before during a sound check, but the two had vanished into the crowd before she could investigate matters by way of relieving Dr André of the martini he held. Normally, Aberdeen would not have given the love life of a friend of a friend much of her mind, but as it happened, she had found herself a host of other club goers whom she had convinced to part with their hard-earned cash for the price of a smile and a name and number not her own. She thus awoke that morning with a pounding headache and queasy stomach. The au pair had accordingly tiptoed down the hall to a water closet belonging to another tenant. She was in the process of relieving the odd Englishman of some of the aspirin that he always had in excess when she had again overheard the name of the city’s most infamous alcoholic through the door connecting the adjacent room, this time in the most sobering of contexts. Anna, livid, had told her fiancé that he should have let Simcoe kill John André. That he had a certain talent for such tasks.

Peggy seemed ignorant of the animosity.

Aberdeen decided that the ex-sorority girl was probably every bit as smart as she sold herself as being but only half as clever as she seemed to think. Prior to meeting her, the Hattian had wondered why nineteenth-century novels had indexes in the back, as though anyone struggled to remember which once-named Russian was a general and which an envoy.  She herself had never had problems of the sort. Aberdeen followed five-hundred-twenty-six separate Twitter accounts and could likely list them alphabetically and according to political alignment if asked to do so. She could remember which class she had back in school with the people on Facebook whom time and distance would have otherwise made into compete strangers. She knew the name and party of everyone on the town councils of Setauket and the surrounding electoral districts. The au pair never considered that she had a talent for this, or that one was required. But Peggy, she worried, associated John Graves Simcoe with Mary Woodhull alone and not with the man he evidently had reason to kill.

She thus tasked herself by making sure the wilfully ignorant did not enlighten each other to aspects of their private lives that posed a real threat to the peace. Aberdeen had heard whispers around Simcoe. She guessed, based on the way he spoke and studied others when they did, that he did not hear much of anything at all. Although nothing about the soft spoken but highly attentive man seated next to her seemed reflective of Anna’s anger or the ire his lesser seemed to accredit him with, she did not want to put Peggy’s safety at any unnecessary risk. She could not take the chance. Wrong as the former governor’s daughter was on everything on which she had an opinion, Aberdeen had never herself met anyone who knew as much as she did about Senate discretionary spending legislation. It was just a pity that for all of the Beckys and Britneys back at Penn State, Peggy Shippen seemed to have no talent for names.

Surely, Aberdeen reasoned, John Graves Simcoe’s could not have been entirely foreign to her. As Peggy claimed herself, she read The Daily Mail. Aberdeen teased this quickly in a few colloquial words from a language common to only two at the table. Mary sounded out the first few syllables as though it were a question.

“Why would the editor tweet out a photograph of you?” Peggy phrased more eloquently as the au pair hoped she would.

“I’m simply an extra in that scene,” Simcoe explained quickly, glancing nervously at the hostess who did not seem to notice the emotion behind his attention. Aberdeen, however, was concerned about the photo for reasons extending beyond a bad high school haircut. She doubted that Mr Simcoe would offer anything outright with regard to the relationship, but as it stood Mr Hewlett had phoned this Elizabeth Gwillim at the supposed crime scene, making himself a murder suspect which in turn had brought Whitehall into the parameters of DI Tallmadge’s search.

What she imagined no one knew was that Mr Hewlett had indeed committed a crime that morning, and greed had made her a co-conspirator, something, Aberdeen felt certain, that could get her deported. She loved the city far too much to say goodbye.

Simcoe said something about John Terry without inflection. Aberdeen frowned when she realised he would give her nothing with which to judge his intentions or involvement. The police, she reasoned, would not be interested in the footballer in the centre of the photograph. They would search for a connection between the editor and the suspect-by-proxy. Unless she found one first, Aberdeen feared they would find her.

“Is it true you wrote a song for Mary Robinson?” she interjected. Simcoe looked ready to capitulate. She smiled.

“It is true that I wrote a poem … which she took a number of liberties with … but yes, I have had my words put to music. I asked not to be given the credit.”

“Plural,” Aberdeen said. “You wrote four songs. Did the cops ask about it?”

“Somehow it did not come up,” he said aridly.

“Seriously?” Peggy’s eyes widened.

“Where did you -”

“Google,” Aberdeen answered as she handed her phone to Mary. Simcoe’s pupils expanded slightly as though she had produced the most damning piece of evidence that could be cited against him. Aberdeen questioned briefly if something had been lost in translation.

“You are quite the poet,” Mary smiled.

“I assure you, Madam, that is hardly the case,” Simcoe replied, his finely tuned falsetto an octane higher than that to which Aberdeen had struggled to adjust.

“Isn’t art subjective?” Peggy inserted encouragingly. She smiled down at her own mobile, telling him the eighth track on an old album got her through high school. Simcoe did not seem to know how to respond.

 _“Once at a café on high street,”_ Peggy read aloud,

“ _In York on a cold afternoon,_

_When the excitement of youth,_

_Began waning,_

_When we both knew our end,_

_Would be soon,_

_I found in our shared unvoiced sorrow,_

_Reminiscing for the moment we shared,_

_That while I’d never quite trusted I knew you,_

_We were far more alike than our peers._

_But sometimes I still think I’m jealous,_

_I think that you won from the start,_

_If not for your last name and riches,_

_For the coup that you staged on my heart,_

_The thing is I thought that I’d tricked you,_

_But now lost in your absence I see,_

_We didn’t escape for your comfort,_

_These outings were only for me.”_

 

“Chorus” Peggy clarified before continuing. Aberdeen squinted, wondering if she was in fact familiar with the track, unaccustomed to oral recitation or simply did not want to scroll back up to read it again. Slightly annoyed, she began to sing along, encouraged by the colour that filled Mr Simcoe’s cheeks as Peggy joined in the melody.

_“And while you never quite liked the spotlight,_

_You knew that it bleached out your scars,_

_You knew that with everyone looking,_

_We wouldn’t face that which we are,_

_Without this distraction I’m lonely,_

_And I know you’re the talk of the town,_

_But if you’ve time at the weekend,_

_You know I still want you around.”_

“That is enough,” Simcoe said. “The rest is … not appropriate for supper.”

Both girls laughed at his reaction to their slightly out of tune rendition. “Compared to the rest of Robinson’s work -” Mary snorted back a giggle, smiling girlishly. This Simcoe returned.

“I suppose ignoring author’s intent …” he tried.

“So what is it about? It is kind of ironic, I mean … Mary Robinson writes so many songs about her alleged lover.” Aberdeen wanted to scream. She tried to kick the girl across from her but not finding Peggy’s legs she lost her balance, causing Thomas to laugh. “In Touch says she is married to some guy she won’t leave for financial reasons,” Peggy continued, plainly not talking about an English starlet of the past decade. “To think she found her soul mate in someone else -”

“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Simcoe scoffed.

“Check it,” Aberdeen said to her new housemate, holding up her manicure for display.

“Lovely,” Peggy replied, looking down at the own hands in confusion.

“Right? ‘Ad my toes done last weekend too, caught up on my tabloids. They broke up.”

“Her and her husband?” the blonde smiled.

“’Er lover. Some time ago,” Aberdeen informed her, hoping against hope that Peggy would understand ‘stop trying’ from her tone.

“Good on her,” Simcoe said.  

“I don’t mean to judge, of course,” Peggy prattled, “I’ve never met her, but I’ve recently met someone whom -”

“His name is Ban Tarleton and trust me, he is a monster. She is better off,” Simcoe insisted. He seemed unaware of all the ways in which he had just saved everyone at the table.

“Tarleton?” Aberdeen demanded, trying to disguise her glee. “As in ‘life begins at conception?’”

“As in his son.”

“Better off,” she echoed.

“But -” Peggy started.

“Don’t tell me you don’t believe in a woman’s right to choose because I have been - ”

“Aberdeen,” Mary warned.

“There are other options,” Peggy stared.

Simcoe took a deep breath. “Don’t tell me either of you believe your politicians at their word,” he said to them, though his eyes remained fixed on Mary, whom Aberdeen imagined he meant to console.

“When someone says at every opportunity that abortion ought to be illegal -” she started anew.

“To my knowledge,” Simcoe interrupted, “John Tarleton never said anything of the sort. He spoke against medical tourism - young women taking the ferry from Dublin to seek legal and safe reproductive care in Liverpool. Either of you want to guess why this remained such a talking point for so long that politicians in other countries have since adopted lines of his rhetoric?”

“Christian values,” Peggy offered.

“Do not pretend that God -”

“I don’t have to ‘pretend’. Look at Abigail. When a mother, no matter how unfit she finds her situation, holds her newborn baby for the first time, it is God given that she loves it and wants to care for it. My mother is an OB –GYN, and she -”

“Sells your fathers policies for him.”

“So on one side we have Christianity and on the other Feminism, concepts this debate has determined to be mutually exclusive,” Mary rolled her eyes.

“Sure,” Aberdeen agreed. “Not at all,” Peggy protested.

Simcoe stifled a laugh. “Looking at the politics behind the argument you’ll find we are discussing the will of neither God nor that of the individual. Tarleton might well have believed in his message, but the only reason he delivered it was to plant in the minds of young women he allegedly wanted to keep away from Liverpool’s ports that his city offered health care options they would not otherwise have had available.”

“You’re kidding,” Mary’s eyes budged.

“I’m not, he was calculating. He had no legal recourse against this industry so he bolstered it while at the same time appealing to his base. I don’t much care for politics. Even the seemingly honest ones have ulterior motives.”

“There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them,” Mary smiled ironically.

“Nothing has ever remained of any revolution but what was ripe in the conscience of the masses,” Simcoe agreed.

Aberdeen wished they would not flirt so publically. Peggy might see affection in their eyes and take it as an invitation to mention John André. She thought to warn her outright but not knowing if Simcoe spoke French or simply quoted long dead civic leaders over half-eaten lobster or, alternatively, if Thomas was paying enough attention to translate for his mum and her illicit lover, Aberdeen simply disagreed in the method most common to those of her generation and interests. Peggy echoed her in wanting to know the source of Simcoe’s claims, saying it sounded like conspiracy. This had the Brit in a bind. He could not provide an answer that would satisfy them both. Aberdeen hoped he would just quit, whisk Mary away upstairs, recite poetry or talk about disillusionment with the political classes, as it pleased her employer.

She could not say anything to Peggy. Not here. Not yet. Not until she understood where the lines were drawn.

Benedict Arnold, whom she must have some love for, at least in a political understanding, had gone missing sometimes Tuesday night. Peggy said she was not planning on meeting him as Twitter insinuated, which, judging from her comparative inexperience with the social media platform might well have been the case. Peggy had spent at least two evenings in the past week in the company of André, who had tried to kill Hewlett, incurring the wrath of Anna and, allegedly, Simcoe. André was meant to be in rehab, but was not. Abigail was mean to be moving in with Jordan, but she was not, and now both women closest to this modern Dr Mengele  would be living in Whitehall, along with Hewlett, the Woodhull family, and herself.

Jordan had been friends with the detective inspector in charge of the missing person case, but he had removed himself from the game, literally, forcing Mary to take his place both on the pitch and perhaps as Simcoe’s second. Aberdeen did not want to see anyone hurt and did not want Thomas exposed to such an environment. Abe seemed to be in agreeance, but he was never around.

Arnold had yet to be found. Aberdeen had to gauge what she was up against without letting the others know she was on to them, without letting them give themselves up to one another.

It was a pity. She almost liked both of her present adversaries.

 “Alright, here is an example – in the early nineties, England was addicted to ecstasy as a nation. As politician, how would you exploit the drug problem?” Simcoe asked.

“Impose policy changes to the criminal justice system,” Peggy answered.

“Pretend you want to turn a profit,” Simcoe said with a slight smirk, turning to Aberdeen.

“Softer sentencing,” the au pair shrugged. “Think on it – with less money going into keeping non-violent offenders behind bars, funds could be freed up to sponsor rehabilitation programmes, families would not be broken up, people would not lose their jobs … or would not struggle as ‘ard to re-enter the work force after years of being removed from society.”

“No,” Peggy countered, “stricter fines would add direct revenue to the courts and serve as a dissuasion to further or even first offence.”

“Forget partisanism for a moment and tell me how to make it taxable without suffering a backlash at the polls.”

“Legalisation?” Aberdeen squinted.

“A methamphetamine?” Peggy gaped. “There is no way anyone holding public office would so much as propose -”

“No, not legalisation. Commercialisation.”

“How would that even work?”

“In the decade prior to the one we are discussing, hooliganism was a public concern. Thatcher even proposed England withdraw from international competition to blur the focal point of widespread violence. Then, thanks large in part to a drug that had the country too preoccupied with vivid hallucinations to put up much of a proper fight the problem ceased. My friend, the politician – a conservative, mind, running a city with a fairly recent history of death-by-stadium-attendance invested money the treasury did not have in infrastructure, and worked out deals with the town’s two major clubs and the satellite company that had broadcasting rights. He had previously been in business with a drug lord in what I suppose is the most literal application of that description, re-established ties and saw an influx of sedatives on the streets. Publically, he put a lot of time and energy into promoting a sport rivalry, modelled after one that existed organically in neighbouring Manchester, and in such, helped to change to public perception around an existing industry that profited the city little until the era defined by his politics. All this, because he saw that Liverpool had a drug problem like everywhere else at the time.”

“That doesn’t actually address said problem though,” Peggy said.

“It doesn’t need to. It fixed the deficit. It is why I don’t trust politicians and why I am telling you both not to waste your time with ideology. In practice, what is done has nothing to do with what is said. The mayor, as I’ve already told you, was a conservative and imposed strict sentencing in accordance with party lines, while behind the scenes worked to make the problem worse because of the benefit it gave to other industry. I can’t imagine a liberal would have done anything different.”

“That is speculation,” Aberdeen objected.

“It’s not. He told me all of this freely when I mentioned that I planned to read economics at university. I had known the man for a great many years, having boarded with a number of his children and roomed with one – this Ban who, you know my opinion of.”

“Wait – you went to boarding school,” Peggy smiled. Simcoe shrugged. Aberdeen glanced at her new housemate, feeling for the first time that they were one in thought. “What house?” Peggy asked giddily.

“What do you mean?” Simcoe peeped.

“What ‘ouse,” Aberdeen repeated for her.

“Slytherin, clearly,” Mary sighed, no doubt exhausted form the six-hundredth round of debate. Aberdeen felt another twinge of guilt. Neither Mr Woodhull was present, and Mary, who had spent so many evenings suffering in silence while father and son examined the divide that defined them, was forced to again listen to like discussion. Still, the au pair reassured herself, she had to continue to be tactical. Peggy was entrenched enough in her worldview that if she could keep the conversation steered in a direction that forced her to defend it; Aberdeen was reasonably assured that she could keep the girl from mentioning her liaison with Dr André. She had too.

Simcoe was smart, almost sweet and almost funny. The man looked, however, every bit as capable of the deeds Anna wanted to watch unfold in her lover’s name. Poor Peggy, who knew little of New York and nothing of this, had nearly let slip that she was in love with an Englishman prior to his arrival. Aberdeen could not let that happen again. She could not. It was easier for all present to imagine bright, bubbly Miss Shippen as Benedict Arnold’s secret lover as opposed to John André’s spring fling when she spoke as though she were her father.

Tired and miserable as Mary seemed Aberdeen simply had to keep the others in their publically perceived positions by removing romance from the conversation insofar as she was capable. Maybe her employer would indeed soon want to go to bed and Mr Simcoe would carry her upstairs. Maybe they would fall in love and Mary would leave Abe and take Thomas to go live with her in the city. Mary would be happy and Abe would be free and she herself would never again have to see or think of this backwater, filled with oysters but void of pearls. Aberdeen had to continue provoking the company. She had to. It was for the greater good, as an author she once obsessed over might well put it.

As things stood, no magic would be needed, for nothing to the au pair’s mind could prove more political and polarizing than a debate centred on a children’s book series. “You say Slytherin like it is a bad thing,” she protested to her employer.

“I consider myself one as well,” Peggy’s eyes widened.

“Right?” Aberdeen grinned as she reached across the table to meet Peggy’s open palm with her own.

“It … was not like that. There were only thirty or so boarders at that school. Our houses as they were separated by gender, nothing else,” Simcoe told them. Aberdeen guess that he had been asked about this before. It was no excuse not to answer. She repeated the question a second time.

“Ravenclaw then,” he sighed.

“Really?” Mary squinted.

“Hewlett would be a Slytherin. I don’t say that as an insult,” Simcoe claimed, though, Aberdeen noted to her own satisfaction he practically spat the distinction. “It is just his nature. He comes on something and pursues it relentlessly. His degree, Anna, his newly acquired position as our club’s gaffer … though I am certain he will never admit to it.”

“I always thought ‘ee was smart and -”

“I’m ‘evil’ - whatever that should mean? No, he is intelligent, annoying though it may be there is no denying it – but it is a quest for prestige rather than one for knowledge that drives him. He had a good job back in London and was involved in important research. In theory, he could have obtained a doctorate from a local university, but no. He wanted an Ivy seal on his diploma. That is it. You see it in the way he dresses, how he grooms himself – everything is appearance, everything is designed at setting a standard he hopes others will accept as theirs or at least believe as his. Myself, I’m smart but not cunning. I make connections without resorting to calculations. I read quite a bit … As to this morning,” he said after a pause, more to Mary it seemed, “While I take some enjoyment from fighting when necessary, I don’t seek it out on my own. I would not even go so far as to imagine that I, or most for that matter, are in any way themselves whilst throwing a punch. It is something you lose yourself in briefly.” It sounded to Aberdeen like an apology, a desperate plea.

“The id taking over?” Peggy asked.

“I hate to disappoint, I see no value in such topic, academic or otherwise,” Simcoe reputed.

“Psychology or modern literature?” she pressed prettily.

Aberdeen kicked at her again, this time finding her target. “Ouch,” Peggy mouthed, waving her finger as though she meant to scold a naughty child or small breed of dog girls like her sometimes carried in their purses.

“Harry Potter isn’t literature,” Simcoe told them, deaf to the commotion. “It is a book we all read as children and now use as a catch all for orientations of all sorts. I have my doubts as to how effective it is. I think it fair to call the politician I alluded to earlier a Slytherin of the highest order as Mrs Woodhull suggested. I’d say his son however was a clear Gryffindor from personal conduct alone, which might suggest in the context of a slanted narrative that he is a ‘good’ person. Brave, brash and adventurous I’ll allow, but politically? He is more conservative than his father, dangerously so-”

“Why would that automatically denote an absence of morality?” Peggy demanded.

“It wouldn’t if Europe didn’t have a terrible habit of letting history repetition and a number of political parties who’s programmes echo themes of twentieth century nationalism,” Simcoe answered calmly. “It is hearsay, but I rather trust the source on this – sometime last fall the lad tortured and killed a number of children who had been smuggled into the UK illegally, paying their passage by swallowing a number of balloons. He narrowly escaped court martial and carries on as though the escaped never existed for him. Even sent me a Christmas gift as though,” he shook his head. “I’m really not one for politics of any sort. I suppose if more men were honest, however, the world would cease spinning.”

“Nor am I, one for politics, that is,” Mary smiled. Aberdeen saw in its warmth the penthouse she had heard Hewlett speak of on occasion and imagined meeting Misters Townsend, Mulligan and Cato at some point in the future when she had an Upper East Side zip code and no reason for them to question her on Judge Woodhull’s supposed collusion, Arnold’s disappearance or anything else they imagined happening in a town where nothing did. The city, she thought, the city had real scandals. It had sensations so numerous that those which claimed her friends here would be forgotten as quickly as her love for a waiter cum plain clothes policeman. Time moved faster in New York. Life went on. Peggy Shippen, she decided, had so much to learn.

“Maybe it was just hearsay then,” Peggy challenged.

“To put it into your chosen constraints,” he smirked, “Hufflepuffs are tediously hard workers but loyal to a fault. The woman who told me had every possibility to profit from this knowledge and every means of verifying its validity, but she is godmother to the man’s natural child and sided with her heart … black though it may otherwise be.”

“Wait,” Mary frowned. “This monster of whom you speak has a family and could still bring himself to kill a kid?”

Simcoe held his hands up in surrender. “I’m only saying that ‘what house are you?’ is an awful determinant for any question of character.” Turning his attention back to Aberdeen and Peggy, he added, “As is ‘Democrat’ or ‘Republican.” Maybe he had a point.

“I see why you left London,” Mary scoffed, seeming to agree.

Simcoe’s face fell unexpectedly. “In all likelihood,” he said softly as though he spoke to no one, “I’ll be returning prior to the start of the second fiscal quarter. I’m past due a promotion, you see.”

‘Slytherin,’ Peggy mouthed.

Aberdeen pressed her lips together and took a quick evaluation of her company and the clock. If they left now, Mary might have a few minutes in which to convince Mr Simcoe to stay. “It’s getting late,” she said. “Peggy, why don’t I help you unpack and we can house-sort all the world’s leaders.” She looked back to Mary who looked elated. Aberdeen hoped that this owed more to her suggestion than Simcoe’s statement. She hoped her exit would be an invitation for John to help her boss into her bedchamber. She hoped that Mr Hewlett was so entertained with himself and the games he stupidly played with acronymed organisations that his continued absence would serve as not to rob his sometimes-friend’s attention away from the woman he had come to see.  

 

* * *

 

“Will you write me a poem sometime?” Mary asked. Simcoe wished she had been so kind as to wait until he reached the top of the stairwell. Her hundred pounds suddenly felt far heavier, that, or he could not support her weight alongside that of his heart. Trying not to show the sudden strain, he glanced down at her otherwise kindly face and found an expectation he felt hesitant to name.

“Sure,” he swallowed. “I should tell you … that song _‘At the Weekend’_ – I wrote it first for a girl around seven years after she first challenged me that I couldn’t. I suppose it took me that long to miss her.” What he did not say was that he missed Mary whenever she was not at his side, a feeling that manifested tenfold with her touch. He wanted to have her. He wanted to help her. He had tried to do both and failed miserably in both respects. Mary wanted to placate him with short smiles and other hints at filtration, imagining him not to be a proper gentleman, imagining that he would not have protected her without. Perhaps he was not that which he strived to define himself being, perhaps he was every bit the demon those who ought to have loved him most seemed to consider him.

Perhaps it was their fault. More probably, it was his.

“Why are you so embarrassed?” Mary asked.

“I’m not,” Simcoe answered. He wondered what she saw in his that she mistook for a blush.

“John,” she seemed to tease, “you are more nervous holding me now than … well -” she stopped, her light expression growing serious.

Simcoe supposed it was true that he had not been half so nervous the night he led into the basement of DeJong’s expecting to find Arnold’s corpse. 

“I had an expectation,” he said. “That night. Even though it was not as we feared, even though what we feared was worse than … I had an expectation around which to acclimate myself. That song I wrote, it reminds me that there are some things you can never adjust to or prepare yourself for. It is not my best work and I never intended it to become public. I wrote it in an hour, an odd moment of clarity in which I realised that I resented the subject for all the wrong reasons. I feel that may be a common theme, and I am not sure what to do with it.”

As horrified as he had been when Miss Shippen admitted in a recitation that she found something within the subject to which she could relate, he took some mild measure of comfort in the recognition that his feelings had once been familiar. Everything he now wanted was a contradiction unto itself. What pained him most was the manner in which his clandestine and conflicting hopes seemed to materialise simultaneously. He found in his heart the malevolence he had so fiercely denied.

The worst of it was it was not just with Edmund. He remember the short tirade he had directed towards Ban Tarleton over supper, the realization that for all the man did to further his downward spiral he would happily trade any of his characteristics for those he freely condemned. Ban had gotten to fight for Queen and Country; he had seen and survived the worst of human nature, had committed atrocities of his own and yet he could still meet the world with a mirth of which he was unashamed. He remained close with ex-lovers and recovered friendships anyone else would have lost in a fight. He was brutal, often broke and yet somehow beloved by all. All, Simcoe noted, except him. Everything Tarleton was and everything he had provoked his hatred, above all, because Simcoe could not remember what he had said that afternoon in hospital clearly, what had reduced ten years of comradery, however strained, to short, slightly threatening texts, themselves seldom sent.

Simcoe could barely bring himself to reply. He wished this came from confidence rather than doubt. He wished there was dignity to the distance at which he held the world, that he, like Ellie, simply felt he had nothing to prove. He wished he had Gene’s tragic and tireless drive for acceptance and approval if these ideals could not be obtained.

He wished he remembered what he said that afternoon, or why he found it so difficult to speak.

He could not fathom how Effie had found it in herself to raise an army of her own rivals in his defence after he had seemingly dealt her such a fatal blow. Asking would prove only another point of contention. He was begrudgingly grateful for the unexpected intervention. He was bitter for having recieved it.

He expected no different from Mary.

He expected nothing at all.

He remained amicable with Sally when he saw her around, things having ended without effort when she ceased searching for some point of redemption within him. He would go as far as to say that he was friends with Anna, purely for the reason that they had never been as close as he once would have liked. Jordan had abandoned him in his hour of need, something Simcoe found as dishonourable as the idea that the others had not.

At nine o’clock on a Sunday evening, Edmund Hewlett was in a police station, presumably answering for his crimes. Simcoe had never loathed himself more.

He had spent more than half his life hoping that Hewlett would face a punishment he felt was long overdue. He hated him for abandoning him in the safe house, to the shoot out that still woke him from slumber and played tricks on his active mind, stimulated by triggers that could not be touched but were pulled all the same. Simcoe wanted his oldest enemy imprisoned. He wanted him to suffer the hope and stress of appealing his sentence, for desperation to be met with consistent denial. He wanted to himself tie the noose, load the pistol or, more probably, issue the injection for what he considered to have been a capital crime. He wanted Hewlett to meet his eyes in his final moments. He wanted him to beg. He wanted to take back the ability to blink which the prodigal price had stolen from him so long ago.

As long as he had amused his demons with the dream of Hewlett’s demise, however, there had always been part of him that hoped he would come back. He had hoped that the lad who had once led him into battle was indeed as brave as Simcoe had initially assumed when the world and its brutality had been less real for him than the heroes in the books of his boyhood. He remembered every bump in the road in the back of a van blackened by cardboard-blanketed windows as being his promised salvation. Hewlett, he assured himself, had surely come back for him.

He carried this sentiment through every fight he had been in at school. When he finally met his missing saviour again - though a pathetic sliver of his former self, or at least of the attributes which Simcoe had ascribed of his own accord - it felt as though some prophesy had been fulfilled. Hewlett protected him from being punished for an evil not of his own hands.

True to form, something had then changed Hewlett’s mind on the matter. Again, Simcoe had found himself in a room with no windows, no answers, no hope.

Under similar circumstance, DI Tallmadge had offered him that which Ferguson had denied a decade prior - an opportunity to understand Edmund’s sudden decision for what it was. Simcoe had deprived himself the humiliation. Hewlett has since only spoken of how sorry he was, with words or without. He felt sorry for him, which was worse than any other atrocity of war. John Graves Simcoe’s closest friend was his most bitter enemy.

With every turn of the clock’s short hand, it became more and more clear that for reasons he felt he should never fully comprehend even if he should learn them; fate had finally bestowed all of that which he had so long wished. Hewlett was being punished through an attempt at protection. Contradictions, Simcoe cursed himself, ought to cancel one another. He longed for the animosity he had so long felt, a lighter burden by far than the feelings of affection and anguish he now carried in a confused bundle.

He laid Mary Woodhull on her bed, made a few gestures at her comfort and hoped for another confrontation with her husband. Something, anything, to get him out of her room and out of his head. He felt he could go for a round with anyone, he longed for a lapse of control. Looking at his raw knuckles redder from the room’s slight chill, he again wondered if he was indeed every bit the monster he had been named in anger and jest.

“Are you alright?” Mary asked.

He was not.

He wanted to have her. He wanted to help her. She wanted no such thing.

“I’m fine,” he answered in a voice he was vaguely sure was not his own.

“Will you stay until I fall asleep?”

“I don’t think that would be appropriate. Sleep well, Mary,” he said as he lightly kissed her forehead.

“I love you, John,” she fluttered.

He pretended not to have heard her. It would make it easier for them both to pretend the lie had gone unspoken come morning. Love, he decided, was always deceitful in the end. It was the grief that had taken his father’s place. It was his mother’s rejection. It was the envy and confusion in which he considered all of his former friends. It was Hewlett, whom he hated, giving a false confession – perhaps in a final act of vengeance in a cycle that had continued far too long.

There was no worse punishment and no worse crime.

“Sleep well,” he said as he shut the door, matching its squeak. He wanted to have her. He wanted to help her. He wanted a fight to make him forget.

 

* * *

 

At seven o’clock on Sunday evening, DS Hatice Yilmaz was informed by her direct superior that there had been a death in the family. She felt her small, slight frame crippled by the phrasing, her eyes increasingly heavy with tears to dry to truly form and fall. Not today, her mind pleaded with itself. Please, not today.

She could tell by the package in DI Tallmadge’s hands that there was no use in praying. Everything she had done to mentally prepare herself for this eventuality seemed in vain. She had been awake too long. She felt she might break.

“I’ve arranged a substitute,” Ben said, almost stoic.

“It doesn’t feel right,” Yilmaz replied. “Why today, Ben?”

Hatice Yilmaz still lived at home in a small flat with her parents and two sisters at thirty-one. She had never known another but sometimes felt as though she was a stranger to the same walls that had been marked with her height at the start of every school year from five to fifteen. She was never home and yet she could not leave, most of her salary eaten by her siblings’ college tuition.

Sometimes, it felt like a waste of money.

After spending Saturday in the office pouring over evidence between bouts of struggling to understand the accent of a Scottish colleague who seemed to speak with a pen in his mouth, she had come in after midnight, only to be woken two hours later when Emine, drunk, stumbled in from a concert. Hatice had been horrified to learn she had been in attendance. She heard the scratching sound of a key that could not find its slot, hoping that her parents were undisturbed by the same commotion she tiptoed to the door, opening it as slowly and silently as possible.

‘ _I saw your boss in his squad car with Caleb Brewster_ ,’ Emine slurred upon entry, half-laughing. ‘ _I guess you were right about him after all._ ’

‘ _Shut-up!_ ’ Hatice hissed in return. Their father worked in the intensive care unit in rotating shifts. If he was due back in three hours, he would not shut his eyes again, and would likely order the exhausted detective sergeant to make coffee for her sister and for him, leading a lecture on life choices down a road to a country he had left a lifetime before. If he, however, had just gone to bed, he would likely stay there, twisting in his sheets until he woke his wife that she might share in his worries. _‘Hatice works too much; Emine stays out too late; Atatürk did not die of liver failure after years of alcohol abuse so that Madison could wear a headscarf.’_ She could hear it now, and would likely hear it whispered all week until tea could turn their doubts into a heated debate with all three of their daughters.

Hatice saw enough in fighting on the Arnold case to invite that energy home with her. She wished she could leave the office behind altogether, but Ben Tallmadge had been cast by the nightly news cycle as the villain in their nightmare of a narrative.

Naturally, Emine and Madison had asked her the same series of questions that they had heard on Nancy Grace whilst her mother offered her the switchblade she had purchased the first time she heard the name Sarah Livingston. Annoyed by the inquiry, she had told her them all while she did not consider the inspector as having a goodly amount of respect for the fairer sex, it would do her larger complaints no credit if she criticised him over crimes of which he had been acquitted.

‘ _Anyway_ ,’ she added when they respectively seemed dissatisfied, ever livid, and ready to make a gigantic meal as an excuse to visit the office. ‘ _I think he is gay_. _Whole thing with Sarah, I think he didn’t deny the accusation of sex outright because his dad is a reverend or something. One of those fire and brimstone types._ ’ They nodded in unison. Most of experience the sisters Yilmaz had with faith based fears had occurred early enough in their youth that such shames had been all but forgotten. Their post Nine-Eleven expression of religion involved telling angry Americans of northern European heritage that regardless of the day’s buzzword, it had nothing to do with Islam. Since the systematic, brutal killings of homosexuals by authoritarian regimes in the middle east had nothing to do with Islam according to the agreed upon narrative existent between American Muslims, no one in the Yilmaz household had any moral problem with what Tallmadge did or denied himself of. The topic was dropped, Hatice had hoped, for good.

Would that she should enjoy such fortunes, she thought as she dragged the girl smelling of cigarettes and stale beer into their shared bedroom.

‘ _Hatice – phone_ ,’ Madison mumbled, curling herself into a tighter ball as Emine prattled on.

She hoped it was work. She could not ethically listen to any more, nor could not tell her sister that Caleb Brewster was a witness and potential suspect in the Arnold case.

‘ _Shh_ ,’ she hissed again. The more she knew, the more likely it would be that some detail would force her to report the conflict of interest to the commissioner. What little support the Special Crimes team had in conducting their inquiry would vanish.

Looking at her email as her sister continued to ignore her request to cease speaking about her boss and his witness, Hatice found that her unit was receiving considerably less aid from their foreign allies than she had gone to bed two hours earlier anticipating.

Ferguson claimed that he did not forward his files. His explanation for how they found their way into her inbox was suspect, but Hatice had to satisfy herself that these in fact were the DI’s private detailing of the investigation that had halted his career. As she read the email over, she found an unexpected parallel between the personal problems of a colleague in Edinburg and the professional setbacks Arnold’s disappearance had inflicted on Tallmadge.

>> _Sir,_ << she texted, forwarding Ferguson’s retraction. >> _I have my doubts to the validity of this claim, but it might be possible that there is more to your removal from the pharma investigation than ‘prioritisation.’_ <<

He did not reply. But then it was four o’clock in the morning, and according to Emine, he was in the lustful embrace of a witness with a few priors in the front seat of his unmarked squad car.

The way Ben looked when their paths finally crossed fifteen hours later in the observation room seemed to confirm the rumours. He had spent most of the day at the hospital with Baker and looked as though he had not slept the night before. He should have, by all accounts, looked awful, but Ben Tallmadge was smiling, and not simply in the way one mirrored the mouths of others in a marked effort towards manners.

“We knew this was coming,” he sighed as he handed her an oversized cup from a bodega with Greek lettering along with a handful of condensed milk single shots and countless packets of sugar, Splenda, and other assorted sweeteners that designated themselves in a wide spectrum of colours.

“I didn’t know what you liked,” Tallmadge added. As much as she appreciated the gesture, the sergeant in dire need of caffeine could not help but to wonder in that moment, as she had on so many prior, how her boss could ever have been promoted before her. She knew the coffee preferences of everyone on her team and remembered those of most suspects whom she had interrogated on multiple occasions. Jefferson drank flavoured lattés. Carlos preferred tea. Rogers wanted to know why ‘Irish’ was not an option, which frankly, Yilmaz also questioned at times.

“I like my coffee like I like my men, Ben,” she told him, trying to feign a sense of humour the day had all but robbed from her.

“Um … creamy?”

“From the fucking office,” she sniffed. Emptying two packets of sugar or sweetener without regard to which heath craze she was or was not participating in into the now-lukewarm liquid, she added with some measure of remorse, “It just don’t feel right. Not today. Disrespectful, this.” She looked down at her beverage, hating outside influence more than she had when she had read the early morning’s troubling retraction.

“Drink,” Tallmadge ordered. “You need it and it is what she would have wanted. We knew it was coming for months.”

“She put up a good fight,” Yilmaz agreed. “You should talk to your dad about officiating the memorial.”

“It has already been scheduled for Tuesday morning. That is when sanitation is coming for the removal. Laurence up in HR has already sent an email. She is to be awarded full honours.”

“Are we just going to like, throw a flag over her as they wheel her out – thank you for your service to this beautiful office of ours?” Yilmaz tried to smile.

“A city flag, maybe,” Tallmadge answered. With the protests going on I don’t think that it would be appropriate to decorate a coffee machine with the Stars and Stripes.”

“We can still fire blanks, right?”

“It is in the email, as long as we don’t fire in the general direction of anyone with a sign, we have the ordnance to mourn the loss of our automated coffee machine as we would any other fallen officer. Did you know she has been in the line of service since the seventies?”

“God, nearly fifty years on the force.”

Tallmadge sighed, walked over to the corner water cooler and poured a goodly amount into his own cup, mimicking the quality that the beloved machine had produced for the past five years. “We will never be able to replace or properly replicate her. But I need you to drink up, regardless. You look terrible.”

“Always what a lady longs to hear,” Yilmaz replied.

“I didn’t mean that in any way,” Tallmadge apologised. “Having approached Simcoe all wrong, I just need you at your best. I have a theory about getting Hewlett that I admit I’d find difficult to execute.”

There it was. “If this is about the files, Ben I am so sorry -”

“Hey, hey no,” he interrupted, lightly touching her shoulder in a way he intended as a comfort. “You did your job. None of us are responsible for what happens on the other side of the Atlantic. But something about it bothers me … If you confessed to extortion and attempted murder, what would compel you to repeat this after an acquittal was granted?”

“Are you suggesting you think Ferguson sent the original email, had second thoughts hours later and reported the matter to IT? I have had that thought, too.”

“But why would he put what remains of his career in jeopardy?” Tallmadge squinted.

“Revenge?”

Ben walked to the window, looking in on Edmund Hewlett who had been waiting for twenty minutes to give a statement. His teammates seemed to have more patience and understanding over the course of the afternoon. As Yilmaz wondered aloud if the man expected special or prefer entry treatment, Tallmadge, suddenly not seeming to be watching the suspect at all asked, “Did you by chance read the transcript of the character statement Ferguson took from Tarleton?”

She had read the files in their entirety six or seven times. Tarleton’s testimony stood out in both the effect it had on the interrogation at large, and for the difficulty Yilmaz assumed someone unfamiliar with the institutions the then-nineteen-year-old cited in his assessment would have in reading it.

“Are you asking for a translation or have you been poking around the Interpol database as well?”

“Not only,” Ben grinned. “Here, this was taken from the quote unquote evidence Hewlett planted in Judge Woodhull’s study,” he said, handing her a photograph in a plastic evidence bag.

“Germany 2006,” Yilmaz read aloud from the back.

“I saw a similar photo posted to the Daily Mail’s Twitter feed earlier,” he told her, “I asked Sanchez to follow up on that end. You know how kids are with social media.”

“Sir, she might not need to. According to Paris, Tarleton roomed with Simcoe for seven years, served under Arnold in Iraq in an operation that ended up crippling him in a way that cost him his command, was recently court martialled for cruel and unusual conduct, gave a character statement that lead Ferguson to obtain a full confession form Eleanor Hewlett … Plus, do you happen to know where he is now?”

Tallmadge nodded. “As of this morning under house arrest at the British Embassy in Washington. Apparently, he told this same Eleanor to relay to DI Ferguson that he planned to frame Major Najma Abboud for Arnold’s disappearance. I got a follow up on it late this afternoon; evidently, no such action ever took place. The feds found Abboud in a Kroger parking lot completely unaware. I don’t know what his game was here … but I think your Edmund in there might. Abboud is engaged to Selah Strong. I imagine the two have met at least once.”

“I can find out, Sir. Speaking of games … are you telling me to play Hewlett the way Tarleton alluded that Ferguson ought a decade ago?”

“No … I have no idea what he was on about,” Tallmadge confessed. “But I think it is possible Hewlett has been trying to point us in his direction. I think it is also possible that Tarleton is the reason we can’t get our hands on André’s research or Hewlett’s medical files. He has at least restricted access to both. The embassy was willing to cooperate this morning. Both Hewlett and I put in requests independently of one another. Then Abboud happened –or didn’t - and everything changed. Cornwallis won’t give me a reason at the moment and I am confident that by the time he does it will be a well-constructed lie.”

Yilmaz shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. We know from Hewlett himself what his government hopes we won’t see, or rather, what won’t become public knowledge.”

“What if that is not it?” he boss challenged. “I have every reason to think there is something more to this story. Cornwallis knew that I knew this morning about Hewlett’s genetic illness as well as his recent suicide attempt. I’ve the clearance to view sensitive documentation and nothing in my service record to suggest that I’ve even in the past shared information with subordinates that they do not have the qualifications to view. He was willing to help, said it would take about an hour … which I know means nothing in Washington. Five passed and I ring him back, suddenly he is evasive in excess. Honestly, it was Burr all over.”

“So we can assume he has spent the whole day with Tarleton -”

“Yeah. But what could this bastard say after blatantly obstructing a criminal investigation that would change Cornwallis’ mind so completely?” Ben grimaced.

“Has he been charged?” Yilmaz inquired. “Coordinate with the feds -”

“You know we will get no support.”

“Then we will know we are on to something,” she paused. “It could work you know, what Tarleton said about how Liverpool fans deal with perceived betrayals. I’ve got something in mind. Let me at this?” she said, nodding toward Hewlett.

“Wait,” Tallmadge instructed. “I need you to carry this out more like a conversation than an interrogation. Hewlett is prepared for confrontation. Judging alone from the extent of the sketches he made of Anna Strong over the past few years, I’d guess that normal human interaction feels foreign to him. I’m no expert, but these don’t seem to have been drawn by the hand of someone who knew her. We took a similar approach with the Nancy Smith tapes – when you talk to him, just talk to him. You are good at that kind of thing. I’m not in the right state.”

“More coffee?” Yilmaz asked, offering what remained of her own.

“Were that only an option … No, finish.  I just had a rough night.”

“Bad date?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“How do you do that?” her boss blinked.

“Emine told me.”

“Unbelievable. How did she get in there – how old is she?” he demanded with a concern Yilmaz had not expected.

“Twenty-four? She should not have been there and I told her not to go but you know how ‘kids’ are. I think you have my sisters confused. Madison – whom may parents hoped to give a better life by an American white-girl name is the Hajibi, Emine the closet punk. They are both old enough to drink now though.”

“In that case I am never going out again,” Ben sighed.

“That bad?”

He hesitated, likely answering only to afford her confidence in the coming interview. “I took Caleb Brewster back to mine and he gave me an off the record run down about the Setauket social structure. He was trying to find out if Simcoe and Mrs Woodhull are having an affair.”

“Are you going to call things off?”

“For the duration of this case,” he insisted. The sex, Yilmaz guessed from the forced surety in his tone, had probably been worth it. Despite all circumstance, he looked happy speaking Brewster’s name.

“Ben … I am not going to do anything with this information. Insofar as I can tell, everyone involved in this investigation is in bed with everyone else. Why not get in on it? No judgement from me. Personally if I had my pick I’d go for the bassist but -”

“You know Robert Townsend is an undercover FBI agent, right?” he laughed.

“Are you saying I have a type?” she winked. “Your secret is safe … just don’t you know, handle things the way you typically handle things. Just have a conversation,” she mimicked, adding, “You are better at that kind of thing than you think.”

“Really?”

“Fuck,” Yilmaz said, “this has been one of the worst days of my professional life. I fucked up the Peggy Shippen press conference to the extent that my Imam had to issue a statement saying that FC Arsenal has nothing to do with Islam. I got two sentences out of Abigail Ingram before she told me I had to charge her if I wanted to continue the conversation. Baker under-estimated either his or Simcoe’s strength and would up in hospital and I haven’t had a chance to organize flowers. I don’t know what to make of the evidence from an older case or the retraction Ferguson followed it up with. And on top of all that, our loyal office coffee machine gave up the ghost. But I feel better, after talking to you I really do. You going to be in here?”

“Yeah I’ve got you.” He replied, looking back to the awkward Brit pulling his from side to side beneath him. It was not nerves, Yilmaz noted. Not yet.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me, Mr. Hewlett, are you a religious man?” she asked upon entry. Bright, bubbly, affording the suspect and the hour underserved cheer.

“Excuse me?” Hewlett barked, completely thrown.

“Your foot … you keep rubbing it back and forth so,” Yilmaz answered, still smiling. “Sorry I – in the mosque shoes aren’t worn and there is this idea that suffering from athlete’s foot is a sign of piety, that normal creams do nothing to alleviate the itch because one is so often attending to prayer. But no … that’s not you, is it? Your problem is that you think yourself entitled to choose your own penance.”

“Um.”

“Did it occur to you that you are subjecting Anna to your fungus?” she suggested. “I have a bit of experience with this.  You want to rent one of those deep carpet cleaners for your bedroom. Use a bleach-based disinfectant for your tub, throw out your old shower flip-flops and use a standard cream until the infection goes away. But I don’t need to be telling you this, do I?”

“I’m … not a Muslim. I just … apparently I need to visit a drug store.” Yilmaz wondered how long he had had this problem and why he left it unaddressed.

“Apparently,” she agreed. “In terms of tidying up a place though, you might be giving me a tip or two. Tell me, how long did it take you to disinfect DeJong’s Tavern?”

“I didn’t,” he answered flatly. Frowning.

“I’m having a bit of trouble believing that. You see, your leased room was spotless aside from some surface litter I suppose you left to be a distraction.”

“Ah – no, no I assure you, Sergeant Yildiz,” he began to stammer.

“Yilmaz,” she corrected, surprised he had come as close as he did.

“Forgive me I -”

“It’s fine, you are an astronomer and it is a more common name,” she said briskly, explaining ‘yildiz’ meant ‘star’ when he again looked confused. “It is me who should be saying sorry,” she insisted. “Honestly, you know, there is not a lot that I get to look forward to in this job, but today I almost had the chance to talk to an author my mates and I are all currently obsessed with, and I think I am half having the conversation lack of manpower resources robbed me of earlier. You familiar with ‘Turn’ by any chance?”

Edmund Hewlett’s odd face twisted in repulsion. “The … ah, colonial melodrama Abigail is in the process of penning? I was not aware the work had any avid readers.”

“Oh, I am sure that isn’t true,” Yilmaz piped. “They were talking about it on a few podcasts this past week.”

“I don’t really … listen to podcasts?” he squinted. “Is that even a thing?”

“It is. So is ‘Turn.’ I somehow assumed you would be more of a fan.”

Hewlett shook his head, stating lightly, “Ah … it is a bit awkward. One of my mates was getting ready to move in with the author but things ended … partially over the way she chose to portray a figure ostentatiously based on him.”

“So she _is_ basing it on real people,” Yilmaz tried to confirm, her eyes widening in artificial excitement.

Hewlett grew silent.

“You know who she reminds me of?” she suggested breezily, “Orhan Pamuk. My friends and I refer to the work as ‘My Name is Redcoat’,” she laughed at her own joke. “’Snow-tauket’ kind of works too, but not as well. Sorry, I imagine that means nothing to you.”

“Orhan Pamuk is a Nobel laureate. Why do you assume me to be unfamiliar with his work?” Hewlett scoffed.

“Ever read anything of his aside from ‘Istanbul’?”

“No,” he admitted.

“The way he writes his protagonists in prose follows this formula that I, and evidently Ms Ingram as well I should think, see reflected in your character. There is always this guy who falls helplessly in love with a woman outside – and often below – his social standing, often in a relationship with a much more dynamic suitor, a Simcoe, if you will.” Hewlett rubbed at his temples. Yilmaz could not tell if he was troubled or terribly annoyed by the comparison.

“Anyway, in short order, he makes her the subject of his artistic expression,” she said as she pulled forward a few sketchbooks, flipping through various impressions of Anna when Hewlett crossed his arms, refusing to touch them. “It never ends well,” Yilmaz said as she slammed the volume closed. “Pamuk, I mean. But tell me, how long have you been in love with Anna Strong?”

“Love? True love? Since I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her … a few weeks. Before that was just … that was private. Detective, sorry, I don’t understand how this pertains to your case. I intended to give an account of the match -”

“Fine. Let’s talk about football. I understand you are a Liverpool fan, is that right? Maybe Everton?”

“Ah -”

“If I had to pick an English side I’d probably go for Spurs, to be honest,” she chirped.

“Well thank God you don’t.”

“I know right? Let’s stick in Merseyside. You’re Liverpool then, yeah? Sorry, that again brings me back to this damn novel I can’t get off my mind. You’ll indulge me? See it isn’t Ingram and Pamuk who do this exclusively in terms of structure  – I mean, let’s face it,  the same could be said of George R. R. and countless others. Maybe it is just modern fiction in general that kind of reminds me of Klopp’s side – stacking everyone up front and giving the absolute worst player all the free kicks?”

“I ah, I never made that connection,” Hewlett replied, nodding slightly in agreeance with the comparison.

“You know what else I read recently that really reminds me of a lot of the themes your friend’s ex likes to incorporate?” Yilmaz asked. Hewlett learned forward, seemingly engaged.

She put a manila folder in front of him and directed his attention to a decade-old injury report. His wide mouth came unhinged. “Yeah … Mr Hewlett, why don’t you tell me about that game this morning?”

“How on Earth did you obtain this?” he demanded.

“You know I’m not sure,” Yilmaz answered, mimicking his expression and matching his energy. “See, I went to bed last night thinking I had gotten DI Ferguson to capitulate. Come to find this morning that he is under the impression your sister Eleanor somehow had it sent from his office account. It seems farfetched, I know. Ignoring all of the reasons he would have to lie about this, can you think of any reason why the girl he once named his primary suspect would want this specifically in my hands?”

“Um -” Hewlett stared. His eyes shifted to the right, an indication, according to one of the books written by Dr Martha Dandridge, that he was in the process of inventing some fabrication.

“Let me try that another way,” Yilmaz broke into his creative mind’s jumbled process. “Do you know if Eleanor is still in contact with this Banastre Tarleton?”

Hewlett straightened. “I have not heard that name in years, but she – Eleanor - is the godmother of one of his little girls,” he answered after a moment’s reflection. “In a – in a loose sense. Ah, I mean, Ban isn’t the biological father or even legal guardian. He was, and maybe still is, involved with a slightly older woman who had a young daughter when the two met. She, ah – this Mary Robinson – the same one you are thinking of,” he clarified, “she had a husband, who I suppose is the father as far as the law is concerned, but to the extent of my knowledge –most of this being from yellow papers - the two were estranged for years at this point. I’ve heard conflicting rumours as to the girl’s actual parentage, Prince Harry seeming less likely than John Terry given the timeline … it is um. Complicated, to put it lightly. Frankly, to everyone’s surprise Ban has proven himself – at least in that singular respect. Both of his ‘daughters’ have exceedingly wealthy benefactors. I don’t – I don’t know if the two, that is, if he and Eleanor have any personal contact outside of this relationship. She is friends with the mum at any rate and coaches at the girl’s fencing club, at least when she is in London. It would be, odd, shall we say, to imagine her and Ban not speaking but … well I know better than anyone how Eleanor holds on to grudges. I really don’t know if the two remain friends. But I have not had much contact with either for years.”

“Because of what Mr Tarleton said about Liverpool?” Yilmaz asked.

Hewlett frowned, perplexed. “The club or the city? Either way – what hasn’t he said? I am sorry but how is this relevant?” he again implored.

“Oh,” Yilmaz perked up, “he gave DI Ferguson a suggestion regarding how he might better conduct his investigation into you and Mr Simcoe and Miss Hewlett and this blood-thirsty horse of yours. Got her to confess and you to, well … to confirm most of what she said.”

“No I … no. Ferguson tricked the both of us in an effort to – no,” he argued, distressed by information Yilmaz took to be foreign to his ears. “Ban and Ellie were the best of friends all throughout their childhoods, I can’t imagine -”

“Yeah. He tricked her,” Yilmaz said as she slid the corresponding confession to Hewlett. He read it quickly and then again with a great deal of concentration. “Here is Tarleton’s testimony for comparison,” Yilmaz offered.

“I don’t understand.”

“Was there a fall out?”

“Maybe,” Hewlett searched, “but years later and it is of no relevance.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you know and I’ll decide if it is relevant or isn’t.”

“Why don’t you tell me _why_?”

“You see the thing is Mr Hewlett, my boss suspects that you are actively trying to make us look in Tarleton’s direction – a revenge scheme of your own, perhaps?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” he insisted. “I honestly had no idea of any of this until -”

“Again, I have a difficult time believing that on its face,” Yilmaz raised her finger, interrupting him. “My unit found, among various other scraps you hid in your landlord’s legal study, this picture. That is him, isn’t it, and John Simcoe?”

“I – ah, it is coincidence.” Hewlett explained while offering none.

“There are no coincidences, Mr Hewlett, not in crime. So either you are telling me you hid this photograph along with what seems to have been the rest of the contents of your rubbish bin in Judge Woodhull’s office, in clear view of his son Abraham to distract uniform while you … what _could_ you have done in the two hours you had us waste, Mr Hewlett?” she mused. “It seems rather strange to me as long as I am on it, that someone as … methodically private as yourself would be absent while we rummaged through your possessions. In your attempt to trash the room, we found that underneath the cups most surface areas were as impeccably tidy as we found the bar, curious – for someone who claims not to have cleaned it. Or did you think we would find the jersey you obviously wanted us to find and focus our attention on that – which again returns me to my original question. Why point us to Banastre Tarleton?”

“I don’t – I didn’t -”

“We have him under house arrest at the British Embassy. He flew to DC midweek to some national security council or another. Benedict Arnold was the chair until he became the subject of the investigation you seem to be derailing – judging from your expression, without reason or cause. I could imagine Tarleton having motive – he served under Arnold on an assignment that cost him his hand and made him ineligible for active duty. Far as I can tell from what we have of his service record, he left school without a degree or any other professional qualification. His commission is set to expire in a few months and while I am no military expert, I imagine he will have difficulties obtaining another given his recent disciplinary record. It looks to me that he was friends with Simcoe, at least in two-thousand six. The day before he boards a plane to America, the man essentially responsible for the upcoming reality that he will no longer be able to provide for himself, not to mention his two illegitimate children, disappears under mysterious circumstances. Hours later, the two blokes he has a pre-established history of trying to help the law take down become the primary suspects in our investigation. So motive. Possible opportunity. But what did you do to piss him off so much?” she asked, adding, “It could be that he has been trying to set you up as well.”

“I don’t know,” Hewlett insisted, still completely perplexed. “I did not even know he was on this side of the globe.”

“Haven’t you lied to me enough?”

“I ah, that is … ages ago, he asked my younger sister to marry him. It upset her enough that she came by my flat unannounced. Told me, um – told me what happened with a thousand and one reasons why she couldn’t say yes, which, to my rather romantic mind, seemed to suggest that she could not bear to say no. I told her to accept. She didn’t. I hardly had contact to either party before and haven’t since. I misread the situation,” he answered darkly, shifting, “With Simcoe it is … slightly more recent, but you’ll have to interrogate him for details. I wish you all the luck in doing so, truly. But it doesn’t have anything directly to do with Tarleton; he is just one of the many friends John lost in a heated exchange. I don’t know how to help you. I haven’t thought of the lad in years and this all comes rather as a shock. I’m glad Ellie didn’t take my advice after all.”

He offered nothing conclusive, but he needn’t. Tallmadge’s goal with this interview was simply to throw him off balance before providing pen and paper in the chance that his delayed arrival was due to hours spent practicing the statement he was planning to write. Ben wanted to show Hewlett as incapable of delivering a written sentence void of small linguistic errors, countering the text messages he believed Simcoe to be sending to himself via Hewlett’s mobile device. The two seemed involved in some sort of corporate fraud, a crime that Hewlett confessed to having committed as a minor. Provided the team could catch him in a lie, he could be easily persuaded into telling the truth, or enough of it, thinking that in so he was protecting Simcoe and whomever else in the process.

Tallmadge planned to gauge federal interest, either Hamilton would be grateful for the cooperation or he would reveal his collusion. Her boss, seeming reasonably confident that the FBI’s supposed aid was intentionally interfering with his search into Arnold’s disappearance, was devising a means of using his key witnesses against the forces who seemed to hope Arnold would remain unfound. Yilmaz could understand the political motivation – with the senator unable to make a mockery of his own platform via Twitter, his defence bill stood a far better shot at becoming policy. But Hatice Yilmaz’s branch of public service dealt with enforcing existing laws rather than gambling on proposed chances with the lives of innocent men.

And Ben was right. Hewlett struggled to hold his own in a basic exchange. He would bend or he would break, either way, his capitulation would provide enough of what Special Crimes needed to continue unhindered.

“Then let’s return to your room,” Yilmaz smiled. “Friday. You trashed it before we came, or tried to.”

“It was not intentional,” Hewlett sighed. “Abigail your … favourite new writer, as I said she broke up with Jordan Akinbode on Thursday – something my fiancée and her friends tried to sort with junk food and a teen oriented drama series. I went to the shooting range … that is -”

At this, she raised her eyebrows. “Which shooting range, Mr Hewlett?”

“A Walmart in New Jersey,” he admitted. “I came back, I -”

“After you were told not to cross state lines?”

“Jordan and Abigail had been together for ten years, needs must!” he insisted.

“So why the Everton jersey?”

“I wasn’t thinking of Tarleton, truly – I had all but forgotten he so much as existed. I don’t imagine John was either, you see, I, that is we had been in a bit of a row as you are well aware ... having come with DI Tallmadge to his to take a claim -”

“Which you refused to give.”

“Ah … yes.”

“My clothes were in the laundry and John had that from his school days which he lent me because he is given to light sadism?” he suggested, continuing, “I don’t know. It had nothing to do with a fight he was once in with someone else.” Hewlett spoke with acidity. Yilmaz wondered if this was due to the row whose details were in doubt, or, borrowing from the man’s own sworn statement, a ‘perceived betrayal’ on the part of Tarleton, whose name he now seemed hesitant to speak.

“No, you and Simcoe have something special, you do,” she tried.

“I should like to think,” Hewlett defended.

Envy? Yilmaz wonder, phrasing her assumption as, “And the photo, why not give that to Simcoe?”

“Because I knew what he would do with it – hide it in some crack or crease or crevasse for all of time, the way he does with any pleasant memory he makes. You’ve see his flat. Most model homes have more intimate detail.”  

“So you are saying Simcoe hides from happiness?”

“I am not entirely sure he knows what happiness is,” Hewlett shifted. He glanced down at the picture. Yilmaz could not read his expression.

“Do any of us?” she mused. “Right – don’t tempt me into a philosophical discussion. We could be here all night. Why don’t you write me an account of what you saw transpire on the pitch this morning whilst I go and inform my boss that I am about the charge the District Attorney’s future-son-in-law with evasion and obstruction of justice and see if I can’t find an extra ankle monitor lying around.”

“I start a new job tomorrow!” he protested with a furious veracity that nearly made DS Yilmaz edge back in her chair.

“Good,” she smiled. “As it happens I have one now and this is part of it.”

“Wait,” he said softly.

She did, for what felt entirely too long. “Am I ‘waiting’ on anything specific?”

Hewlett swallowed. “I don’t know if this is relevant, or useful – but I, that is if you are looking for evidence of collusion or something that might help you with the FBI or with DI Ferguson or … or my embassy, with getting them to cooperate with your search … I remember some things about a business dealing my father had with the former Mayor of Liverpool which might serve some interest or another. Ah, Tarleton’s late father, you see. He passed a few weeks before this statement was drafted.”

“A family on the rise, huh?” Yilmaz smirked at the idea of the ill placed attaché’s interrogation tactics being used to his detriment years after he had offered a slight against his rivals.

“Don’t confuse fiction for reality,” Hewlett said flatly. “There is no such thing as social mobility in Britain. It doesn’t stop those not born to it from trying, however.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

 

* * *

 

“Good work, Sergeant,” Tallmadge grinned. “You have him nervous now, he is writing hurriedly. We will catch him in the lie he best likes telling and call him back in tomorrow before work.”

“Oh, I still have every intention on booking him today,” Yilmaz confirmed as they both watched the suspect through a one-way window.

“I already have Sackett setting up a monitoring device. I imagine Hewlett will go straight to Simcoe. Heidi, I think the most useful thing he provided us was that good ol’ John Graves likes to hide things in his books. With any luck I’ll be able to get a warrant -”

“Luck? Ben, were you listening? Do you realize what this means? Leverage. If nothing else, we can now be certain of the real reason you were taken off your pharma case-cum-crusade.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think … it is possible, or we could possibly make the case that their entire energy concern is a massive store front. Even if Burr won’t budge, from what you have told me about Cornwallis … that might just be enough to demand cooperation.”

Ben nodded. “I’ll let him think he is safe for the night and strike at dawn.”

“Your tactics have proven successful thus far,” she shrugged.

“If nothing else.”

Hewlett rose from the desk and began to pace. Nervously, he looked down at the paper and made a few adjustments.

“I had better get back in there,” Yilmaz said.

“Take him down to processing. And then call it a night.”

“And you?”

“With any luck I’ll be indulging my inner grammar Nazi until the wee hours,” he smiled.

“Call your new boy-toy first,” she winked.

He smiled, blushed slightly but shook his head. “No. First, I am going to email this Francis Marion about your suspicions around Tarleton to see if he wants to go another round with the bastard. I’ll CC Lafayette and Hamilton, and then it is just a matter on monitoring Hewlett’s movements to see if either bites. Like you said … everyone seems to be in bed with one another. Let's rouse them a bit. Find out what happens.”

Yilmaz returned her boss’s grin, for the first time feeling that she might have something to learn from him after all.

 

* * *

 

There were a number of factors keeping Ban Tarleton from closing his eyes as Sunday night stretched into Monday morning. Some practical, some personal, most professional, but all leading back to the single truth that the colonel had reason to anticipate would define the rest of his life: prior to leaving for America, he had planned and executed a perfect murder in cold blood.

Time, he mused restlessly, had no real meaning in the new world.

Tense, however, was operative and his thoughts formed themselves around the third conditional as they transitioned from absent to obsessive.

When he had gotten on the plane, he had no reason to suspect that his former commanding officer’s act of getting lost on streets so planned out as to form a grid would quite likely lead those searching for the now-senator to find a valve of poison which had planted in Edinburg months prior. In hindsight of having read Edmund Hewlett’s complete medical file against John André’s original research proposal, he reasoned that he might have been less clever and far less cavalier in his planning. He might also have given this evidence more consideration before forwarding the files to a third party whom he knew to be far more cunning than himself. He might have confided his specific designs on vengeance in someone whose sympathies he held. But he had not done any of these things. Society, he knew, was fickle and love was ever fleeting.

Though time had no meaning in itself, it was far too late for wistful hypotheticals.

It was far too late for doubt.

Banastre Tarleton had been damned from the moment it had first been suggested to him that Edmund Hewlett’s illness was unnatural. He had been fourteen. Half a hundred lifetimes had since passed in an equal number of years.

Soon, he well suspected, his private postulations would become matters of public knowledge. He would be arrested before his victim drew his final breath. There might, he feared, even exist a means of saving the man.

Tarleton had planned a perfect murder in the past tense. Those calculations now belonged to the boyish fantasises that defined every bad gamble he had ever taken. A sad reality clung to him despite his hesitations towards understanding. The designs of providence followed a simple pattern. Brave, brazen Ban, known to many by less endearing epithets, had once again managed to cheat his dreams out of fruition. As he always had. Perhaps he had been all too hasty; perhaps he had taken too much time to act. Perhaps time was and had always been a fallacy and he was as much a victim of fortune and fear as this Dr John André’s unfortunate test subjects.

In hindsight, he might have simply shot the man he meant to kill to the same desired effect. He did not shy before bloodshed. The Duke of Richmond, Argyle and half a dozen other places would have already been dead and he himself would have achieved immortality through the act. Picturing a point blank shot taken on a crowded street, he smiled. Then frowned. The rest of the Hewletts would likely have then been pressured to move a decent enough portion of their holdings out of his hometown. Everything his own family had fought for would have fallen to riot and ruin. The very consequence he had hoped to avoid would have been rendered an inevitability.

It might yet still.

Ban closed his eyes. In the darkness he created for himself, his fears felt stronger than in the blackness given to him by the night. He understood emotionally as opposed to merely intellectually why his oldest friend found it impossible to act for what seemed such a terribly long while. It was curious – somehow cuts felt deeper when one tried to factor for economic effect. Although this was a reality common to everyone engaged with the business end of politics, it spoke to a concept that seemed uniquely Hewlettonian. If the Queen’s cousins had not invented the game itself, they certainly set its stakes.

Perhaps in light of the Tuesday prior, all bets had instead been placed by John Graves Simcoe, who seemed positioned to profit most from the upset at its current stage. The thought threatened to make Tarleton ill. He had half a mind to turn on his laptop back on and send Tallmadge every file he had succeeded in convincing the ambassador to deny the NYPD’s search. Regardless of whether he cooperated or not, his luck, for what it was, was certain to run out. For a moment, he let himself flirt with the idea of dragging an old schoolmate and rival with him down into the pits of hell.

Except Cornwallis felt he needed Simcoe in some functioning capacity, which by ambassador’s exaggerated sense of importance seemed to translate into the bloody nation needing Simcoe punching numbers or whatever it was he did that served their designs.

Truly, there was no justice.

Tarleton could have never anticipated that months after he had made his move - of all the people he never expected to again suffer in this lifetime – Simcoe would become a suspect in the ill-timed disappearance of the man he had come to advise on defence policy.

The attaché envisioned every possible scenario of his former friend’s involvement in this speculative crime only to arrive at the same conclusion: it was inconceivable, impossible.

Even if Simcoe had motive, even if this cursed psychologist André had removed the need for one, Tarleton knew from bitter experience that the man simply could not be trusted act meritoriously when called upon to do so, when moral would demanded the same of any other individual so confronted. Simcoe was given to short bouts of violence, certainly, but he was no murderer. The feeling and finesse required failed him, there was not enough goodness in Simcoe’s heart to allow blood near his hands. Tarleton could accept within reason that intensive therapy could transform anxiety and adrenaline into impulse, but not to such an extent that a man the past year had taught him had always been a coward could be driven to kill for either just cause or unrelated concern. Care could not be born from void. No matter how many times someone as inwardly cold and cruel as John Graves Simcoe might be asked how he ‘felt’, no given answer could possibly be anything more than an ill-constructed lie. Ban Tarleton simply could not believe the boy he had once known as a suspect under any set of circumstance.

But then they had all believed Simcoe, once.

They had believed John when he said that he loved Effie Gwillim. They had believed him when he said that he was engaged to this Anna Strong. They had believed him when he said that Edmund Hewlett was doing well. They had believed him all time times he called them his friends. Maybe, in the almost mythical ‘once’, it had even been true to some measure.

But this was not a question of time, it was one of tense and Simcoe’s was past.

He had abandoned his childhood sweetheart in hospital after their baby had died inside of her, saying things of such monstrous nature they ought not to have been thought, much less uttered aloud. Anna Strong - if existent - was not his and likely never had been. Edmund Hewlett had attempted to kill himself during his dissertation and Simcoe had not managed to say anything on the matter to his siblings, all of whom he was in semi-regular contact with. It was depraved. 

As to the reality of the friendship they had known as children, Ban had recently learned that John had been told while they were still at school of half the horrors the Hewlett siblings were forced to endure in service of their house words. Rather than offer comfort, his then dorm-mate had taken the opportunity to lament his own misfortunes - to cry over situations that at that point had no longer existed for him in any definitive sense when any other response would have made such a positive difference in the lives of people he claimed to have cared about when not society as a whole.

Simcoe simply did not concern himself with others.

He never had.

It was this deficit of character had been what kept him from service, rather than the partial deafness on which Tarleton was sure the demon sought to blame the dismissal.

If the world was a just place, Simcoe would have sought to kill the duke years ago upon being told that the man was a serial child molester who targeted his own kin. If he lacked such strong convictions, he could well have arrived at a more appropriate response than abandoning a victim in a in the gent’s toilets and refusing to speak to her for the rest of term, angered that the only reason they had ever had sex was that she suspected – rightfully so – he had never much fancied her. Ties were fragile and affections fleeting, but empathy should have been easier than meeting injustice with avoidance.

Looking back, Tarleton reasoned that he might have pressed the issue. He might have asked what the two had argued over rather than revising for A Levels which he knew he stood no realistic shot at obtaining. He might have smothered Simcoe to death in his sleep as he had often fantasised about for reasons that had yet to be given particular names. It would have achieved nothing in the immediate, but a decent man would still be around in Arnold if Tallmadge’s theories warranted any merit, and this accursed André would have never found someone mental enough to create lab conditions that could possibly lead to such potentially disastrous implications for men who served.

But Simcoe could never understand this, no matter how much ‘therapy’ he had undergone.

Tarleton had his doubts that André had much more than a working concept of that which he was in the process of making and staking his name on. The doctor had never served and Tarleton felt a certain sickness in the idea that Senator Arnold, who most certainly had, subscribed to André’s proposed prescription.

The attaché stared at the remains of his right hand, picturing scar tissue where the room emitted only enough light to show him a silhouette. There were two types of fear, André had written. The first was instinctive; it was what told you not to put your hand into an open flame. The second was reactionary; it was what told you to cauterise a wound when you would otherwise die from blood loss. The psychologist proposed a therapeutic means of eliminating the first form, overcoming inborn apprehension by increasing the elements more appealing to the overactive mind.

It seemed to Tarleton that André meant to create an entire army of men who did not consider consequence against fears born of their own tempered misgivings. The former colonel knew he had a touch of this himself from nature- it allowed him to kill indiscriminately for Queen and Country, it allowed him to exact vengeance on incarnates of evil without forcing him to question perspectives much beyond his own.

However, he was consciously aware that the world would be a far worse place if there were more men like him in it.

Ban Tarleton was vain, charming and charismatic; he had been born with a sense of how to get people to give him most of what he wanted and had few qualms in claiming whatever was not on offer by alternate means. Although self-admittedly a sociopath with tendencies towards brutality, he did his upmost to service this overwhelming trait to the benefit of the people and values he held dear. But he had known far too many politicians and diplomats to expect others to share in his standard of conduct. The world did not need a greater excess of cruel men than that with which was already cursed.

John André, he suspected, suffered a worse stand of the same infliction as that which claimed him and somehow thought it wise to spread this illness to the wilfully innocent.

Examining his own life against the original proposal - as all were tempted to do when reading up on the workings of the human mind - Tarleton could identify with ease a number of incidences in which he had been overcome with terror born from neurosis-invented scenarios of the sort André suggested the psyche could be trained not to cower to. Curiously, he found that none of the moments of his life in which fear had most overwhelmed him corresponded to anything he had been trained to deal with in the field. How, Tarleton questioned, would anyone be helped had he blacked out in a fit of rage in hospital while his biological daughter was being born, or while giving a speech at his favourite sister’s wedding, or while making empty chitchat with the Windsors during a charity golf match he physically could not partake in?

André did not seem to consider the effects his theories might have on civilian life. This told Tarleton that the doctor did not expect anyone to return to it. The bloody French, or so he had been told, forced science majors to take ethics courses throughout their intellectual development; he wondered why the British did not hold their own to the same lofty standards.

The attaché tried and failed to address his misgivings. He was meant to give a speech the next day in front of some congressional committee or another. He was meant to sell a defence bill in Arnold’s absence. His own government had want to implement the use of spy drones within its own boarders and were reliant on the Americans to initiate the Metternichian practice, to answer all questions of human rights violations with a heavy hand as Britain integrated its own military technology into the public sector. In principle, Tarleton agreed with this part of the proposal. Where his trust varied was the clause on testing André’s methods in the field. Tarleton thought of waking Cornwallis to ask if this part of the package was imperative, if he might use part of his twelve-minute window to redress the research that had already wrought such malignity on Edmund Hewlett and, perhaps, Benedict Arnold - people he knew and had once loved.  

Tarleton found his own choice verb curious but ultimately agreed with it. Love rather than fear forced men into action. He loved his daughters, his siblings, his city and his circle of friends. He would fight kill and die for that which he held dear without question. The same held true for the men with whom he had served. It was not something that came up in conversation, but he could not conceive of the idea that anyone in his battalion had not felt the same way about the cause they served. But then no one had asked them how they ‘felt’. It seemed only sick people were given that benefit and the sane would be made to suffer.

The irony that his own meticulously planned crime could be undone by a boy he had only known through an accident of the alphabet verged on comedic. The reality present in the fact that inaction he paired with a surname that in a list of thirty fell beside his own would have prevented the past decade its pain was a tragedy all unto itself. Still, Tarleton told himself as he again tried to shut his eyes, he would have still poisoned the realm’s most powerful landholder had he had an inkling to what he was but certain would prove his own unlikely undoing.

Perhaps he had without paying it any conscious mind. He knew that upon abandoning the rights and duties inherent in his name, Edmund Hewlett had gone to New York to pursue a title of a different sort, one that his two sister who had then stood to inherit nothing had no trouble obtaining for themselves within Europe. He knew the story of how Hewlett had first met to Simcoe – sad or serendipitous, depending on whatever factors dictated the mood in which it was being told. The two had evidently found one another again across the ocean through some accident of fate or association football. Tarleton remembered being rather amused over the continued ordeal that was their ‘friendship’ until he was not, until Simcoe evidently began inflicting pain in ways no longer passive.

According to his phone, it was one-thirty in the morning. A single question kept Banastre Tarleton’s eyes from closing. If DI Tallmadge was right, if Simcoe was in some way responsible for Arnold’s disappearance, was André ultimately to blame?

He thought about the ambassador, the plans he had made when concerns surrounding the French exit from a civil war in Mali, separate nationalist movements in individual European Union member states and the proposed referendum could be used to bolster a trade agreement that had spent decades in deliberation and debate. He thought about the frantic calls Hewlett had made to the embassy, how he had convinced Cornwallis to deny his request.

It seemed to him that Hewlett suspected Simcoe’s hand.

It seemed that he alone saw in the sought after record its damning contradiction. It would not be long, he thought. If Tallmadge was half as good as his record suggested; the world would soon know the facts surrounding the stroke the man suffered at twenty. It was not a genetic condition carried though the Gordon line. The twelve blood princesses in scattered houses throughout Britain would not curse their male offspring to the same fate as Edmund was whispered to have suffered. They could marry without physically weakening the monarchy.

Long ago, someone had wanted the heir presumptive to the Hewlett holdings dead, presumably fearing that he was readying to go to the police with the same confession he had offered the NYPD because some bird had lost interest in him. It was comic. It was tragic. Maybe, it had always been fate.

Tarleton had been confident enough in his explanation of who had most wanted to end young Edmund’s life that he had murdered a man with the same method to force a confession and cover up. He had thought he would never be caught.

In light of Arnold’s disappearance and all the other crimes it seemed set to expose, he now felt certain of a life sentence. The police, or the feds, or the French or some other force would get their hands on all of the files on his laptop and make the same connections that he himself had made. He had no idea of his next move, not having anticipated the need for one.

The attaché grabbed for his phone, an old Blackberry with an actual keyboard, the only model he could manage. As he waited for his email to connect to the server, hoping to find the advice he had sought earlier in the evening by forwarding André’s research proposal to a newswoman far smarter than he, he sent a text to his thirteen-year-old telling her he loved her and was thinking of her. Teenagers, he knew from recent experience, did not like answering their phones. He would call his little one in Scotland one he was certain her mum had finished readying her for preschool, not wanting to add to the stress with an interruption. Marie did not respond, not that he much expected her to. Effie Gwillim’s address was not present in his email either, which came as something of a surprise.

The only message he received had been sent by the Foreign Office. Ban Tarleton read over the attachment, longing for the moments passed in which he anticipated prison for all his better efforts.

Though probably deserved, some punishments, he decided, were far worse than those which the mind was given to inventing on its own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I either don’t have a ton of things to note this round or don’t feel much like writing a long list after rereading that chapter before hitting post (likely a combination of the two), but let’s have at it:
> 
>  **John Terry** is and English centre back who previously captained Chelsea and the national side. He is at least as famous for being a disgusting human being as he is a distinguished footballer, and currently plys his trade for Aston Villa (something I was surprised to learn was the result of a transfer, as nearly every Championship player who immediately comes to mind can otherwise be described as being ‘on loan from Chelsea.’ It is a thing.) 
> 
> **John Tarleton** was a businessman who served as Mayor of Liverpool in the mid-eighteenth century. A few of you may know that I personally find this particular public office ripe for discovering comically misappropriate uses of time and tenue. The current holder, for example, recently used official stationary to inform the FA that he filed a claim with the police to investigate bad business practices he believes evident in the transfer of a footballer from the club he supports (… Everton. Seriously.) to Chelsea. One of his predecessors demanded a public apology for The Patriot’s Col. Tavington, whom he felt was a slight on a similarly named local hero. Inspiring stuff.
> 
>  **Orhan Pamuk** is a Turkish novelist. It is probably unfair to summarize his works as DS Yilmaz did … but um, if protagonists who agonize over a woman below their social standing to the point of gross obsession with unhappy endings is what gets you hot, I can recommend at least five works of fiction that might be of interest. (If you want to seem academic, citing ‘East-West dichotomy’ as his theme probably sounds more appropriate than ‘do you remember what TURN did to Annlett?’) **My Name is Red** and **Snow** are two of his novels. I remember not being crazy about the English translation of the first, but beyond that (and all joking aside) they are both worth the read.
> 
> Anything I missed? Anything I mentioned that you want to know more about? ;)  
> As always, thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Up Next: Here comes the general (and his right-hand man!)


	36. The Own Goal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarleton receives devastating news from London. Ferguson discovers a spy on public transit, leading him to uncover a devious plot he may be too late to hinder. Simcoe opens fire on his own forces. Mary gains crucial intelligence from an unexpected source.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I write Hide and Seek, I tend to this of it as a league table, with each interaction between characters comprising a single match. Right now, we are in January with all of the problems that entails … and to be honest, you guys – I’m not holding out hopes for this week/end despite all the noise. We have something like a mid-week FA cup match between two sides that have no business being in the third round, which is only mildly exciting in itself because I am getting the feeling that these clubs (Tarleton and Ferguson) will meet again in a relegation play off at the end of the season. ( … And because I am kind of hoping one or both of the gaffers (Cornwallis and Ellie, respectively) will soon get the sack, if only for that the mid-season managerial merry-go-round is always a joy to behold.) We’ve got a derby (!!!) between two clubs vying for a CL qualification spot (Simcoe and Hewlett), a host of new starters (Aberdeen) for clubs that could really use them (Mary) as a result of the transfer window. Deadline day is approaching, injuries are beginning to pile up … anything _could_ happen … but, I don’t know. I’m not feeling it. This seems like the kind of weekend where I’ll be real with you – I’d just catch the highlights on MotD and uh, go see what’s up in Serie A or Ligue Un. It feels like I ought to recommend other, better fics with that disclaimer, but counting comments, I have a total of four readers (who also happen to be the best writers.) You all know what you have penned and are already well vested in one another’s libraries. ♥ 
> 
> Love you all dearly, and apologises in advance for what I am sure will prove a series of disappointments and upsets. 
> 
> Want to do the thing anyway? Let’s go for it: Brussels, veganism, hyperbole, parenting, petty theft, rejection, organized crime, collusion, bribery and some interspersed meta on H+S itself.
> 
> The return key looks tempting, I know. Cheers.

He was certain the hours would find him again when he returned, most likely in a customs control queue comparable to purgatory.

Though far from a linguist, he reasoned that there were particular words which centuries of Anglicization had sought to render unrecognisable against their derivatives. ‘Angst’ was fear for Germans. Liberty, or as the French put it ‘liberté’ was more concerned with the collective than it was with the individual when spoken of on the continent. However, the most striking example of this disconnect which Banastre Tarleton had ever personally encountered was with what the English referred to as ‘gross bureaucratic incompetence’ - a phrase that had surely been adapted from the old Flemish ‘Luchthaven Brussel-Nationaal.’ This idiom, to his great confusion and dismay, appeared on the e-ticket the Foreign Office had sent. He had no great hope that the flight had been booked in error. It was too late for that, or too early. In the colonies, it was always difficult to tell.

But the hours would find him again. They now knew where to look.

In Britain, wait times were inconvenient; in contrast and comparison, the Belgian system was altogether stagnant. Although lying in bed a world away, Tarleton felt his legs buckle under his own weight at the mere suggestion of that which awaited him as he attempted to return to the estuary via the river Styx. Hours would turn into days before he would make it through the initial checkpoint; shoes, jacket, belt, watch and wallet removed, laptop and phone unpacked and place into a grey plastic bin, whilst stuck behind a horde of holiday travellers, all of whom were confused by this basic airport etiquette.

Singular among crowded travel hubs, there was no option at the first gate for frequent flyers who understood security precautions to bypass the chaos on which the entire operation seemed to thrive. This in itself would prove an annoyance, but witnessing the flaws inherent in humanity (so perfectly on display at this airport) was an agony akin to no other. The few other passengers, who, like himself, had blessed at birth with the strength and stamina required to queue for twelve hours or more, brought nothing of what they ought to have learned from the first circus to the second. The charade of the powers-that-be trying to determine who among the angry masses had come to their country with an intent to kill and who had simply developed a certain bloodlust whilst waiting well past the time their connection was due to depart would start anew. Slower, it seemed, at the second checkpoint than it had been at the first.

Time had nothing better to do than to remind one of its existence in the centre of the Union and the Belgian authorities were always keen to waste what little was left of it. As though they intended their airport to function as a living metaphor for Europe as a whole, they often placed Flemish and French speakers at the same workstations, ensuring no understanding could be reached even among employees of the dysfunctional deep state.

Tarleton, who had spent ten years in counter-terrorism, could see no such benefit to any of these measures. In the off chance one made it through the series of crucibles, he or she would likely succumb to starvation or dehydration long before finding their gate. Time showed no preference towards any particular religious or political affiliation. There was only one fate in Brussels, and no amount of prayer or petitioning exempted one form eternity. Flights often went unmarked, water was taxed higher than oil, alcohol or tobacco, and every kiosk selling food seemed to specialize in over-priced, organic, locally sourced vegetables sliced thin and served raw on gluten-free vegan bread, itself so hard that it could be used as a weapon. Nourishment, it most certainly was not. If the bloody Belgians for reasons unknown allowed these baguettes to bypass security when a bottle of hand sanitizer could land one a life sentence, what other mistakes had been made for all of their wasted efforts? The attaché could not fathom, even with respect to NATO alliances, how the ever-righteous Americans had not made these terminals the topic of hawkish rhetoric, for surely such sandwiches posed a greater threat to their safety and way of life than whatever they had once claimed Saddam had hidden in the desert.

This, he knew, would prove his final mission. Reading his return ticket, he realised to his own surprise that he was not ready to die, not, at least, for a cause as unworthy as a connection that would never come.

Then again, it was perhaps better this way. Ban Tarleton did not want to go back to what little he had left. Not now. Not ever. Even if he exempted the practical need to remain abroad for the time being from his considerations, there was nowhere in Britain that felt like home. Tarleton had moved into the smallest of studio flats nine months prior when he and his long-term domestic partner had finally admitted to the differences it now seemed they would never be able to reconcile. Half of his things were still at her place, half of them were stacked in boxes in the atrium of Effie Gwillim’s penthouse, all, as both women claimed, were slated for charity. He, however, had no way of addressing this concern, unable as he was to figure out a means of defying physics, of unpacking the whole his possessions into an IKEA bookshelf and wardrobe that stood mere inches from a twin-sized bed he shared with a small dog which barked day and night - easily frightened as it was by the noises on the rougher side of the city. A city, Ban noted, that had once been his. He questioned if the area could even be considered part of Britain anymore in this stage of its decline.

He had expected more from his life, hoped more form himself, instead finding that the flaws that had become apparent upon receiving his inheritance had not disappeared with the sum left to him when his father had passed a decade before. Although his salary was decent, it did nothing to cover the costs of his personal deficits and strengths. The colonel was a gambler, he had two little girls he loved to death living with their mothers on opposite ends of the island, and travel, necessary as his situation made it, was expensive when one had limited time to book and no means of operating a motor vehicle. He did not earn enough from his wages to spend each weekend in a hotel in either capital, and yet he had no choice. Sometimes, he would be able to guess at sporting fixtures well enough to make up the difference. Sometimes, he had enough of the balance paid on his credit cards to max them out once more. He had to. He knew how lucky he was, given the circumstances that had lead to his court martial, to maintain limited visitation rights at all.

There was an irony that every field decision he made was done so with the interest of his illegitimate children in the forefront of his mind. It became bitter with the understanding that he seemed in the minority in this motivation, that he stood no chance of convincing the people running the country he loved not to invite the problems of Europe into their embrace at the expense of their own people. It was too late for that. Or too early. This would and could only be decided decades after his death.

Time did not seem to exist now, not here in a country where everything was open for twenty-four hours. Tense took its place as much as grammar could substitute an abstract, and, at ‘present’, none of these problems would have proved any concern save for the fact that Tarleton’s personal life consisted of little beyond that which caused him to be shunned in a professional capacity. The return ticket was a slight on his honour as a gentleman. He did not want to go back. He could not and in this respect, Belgian incompetence was truly a blessing.

Though his flight was booked for Wednesday morning, Tarleton reasoned there was no chance that he could make it up to Edinburgh to spend Easter with his toddler.

If he were back in Britain in two weeks’ time, he would have no excuse to avoid the vicinity of his so-called crime. Absence would look more suspicious than presence, but this thought perished as quickly as he surely would in Brussels; alone and lonely awaiting a plane that would never come, wondering if he had enough of a charge left in his mobile to ring Mary and ask if this was what ‘Waiting for Godot’ was meant to be about. He found he was already reminiscing for the days when his former girlfriend had drug him out to the West End for a bit of culture, something he had not anticipated he would miss until he had gone through a series of several someones-new. He had been with no one since and was beginning to doubt he ever would. But then perhaps it was for the best. He had little time and less to offer.

Tarleton switched screens and saw in his banking app that he had no withdrawable funds, the bets he had placed on horses and half time scores at the weekend earning him a grand total of less than twenty quid. He questioned if this, too, was for the best, given the predicament his government had placed him in. Tarleton returned to his traumatic recollections of the terminal, wondering if the placebo effect of having eaten was not in fact worth the €9 charged for green and glorified cardboard. He remembered once buying something comparable in the German capital as a student, taking a bite and offering the rest to a kit of pigeons who turned up their beaks. Tarleton had seen the same sort of animal indulge in such delicacies as cigarette filters and chewing gum that had since become part of the pavement. He had wondered ever since at every heath craze; what poisons that even pigeons would not touch were present in that what was said to be beneficial to people who cared about animals or the environment or some other lost cause? Maybe, he smiled, these had only passed the rigorous food and safety regulations on the ground that the government wanted to eliminate this element of the population en masse, a holocaust masquerading as a liberal movement. He liked to imagine his taxes were amounting to some great good.

It was better that he was broke. If forced to fly to Brussels, he would prefer to perish from natural causes than to commit suicide with an expensive sandwich ostentatiously made with all-natural ingredients. He would most likely depart this life in Terminal B, his body added to the mass grave that must exist in the vicinity with those of all of the other poor souls who had been damned by their employers to serve on this particular front; the same as he would have had he been born a century prior giving that he remained a member of the armed force. Tarleton found this thought poetic rather than hyperbolic, and considered including it in the complaint he debated filing with the Foreign Office.  

Perhaps it was the hour or the lack there of, but he found he could not force his thumb to compose more than >> _In accordance with my rank I deserve to be shot rather than sent through Belgium regardless of what I’ve done to offend_ << a poorly worded sentence he would ultimately never send. An alarm he had set the evening prior caused the device to vibrate in his hand, itself paralysed with tiny prangs of pain from the extent and angle of its positioning. _‘_ ♥ _Ring Banina before school_ ♥’, it read. Tarleton closed his eyes and felt the pillow beneath him. He felt certain that for all the ills of European partnerships apparent at the airport his return flight was booked though, at least he would be able to find rest within its walls.

Time would find him there. It had nothing else to do beyond defining delays by the indefinite. He wondered how long it had been since he had slept; if this interval could even be measured in units he considered did not exist. Not here in America, at any rate.

Over the phone held by a hand that had fallen asleep independently of the rest of his body, Ban’s youngest daughter cheerfully contradicted the basis of his assumptions.

She told him with confidence it was three in the morning where he was, because it was eight in Edinburgh and Washington was five hours behind. >> _Didn’t they teach you that in school, Daddy?_ << she laughed. He complimented her on her numbers and imagined her smile - so like his own. Encouraged by his enthusiasm, his toddler went on to inform him between giggles every variation of what-and-what made ten. When it was ten o’clock, it would be five in America, or so she said. She was just learning how to tell time. He could not tell her that there were some places where it did not exist in ways the clock could track. She would not understand that yet. He barely did.

>> _Georgie, this is out stop – time to say goodbye!_ << he heard the young woman he had lain with for one night while working undercover chirp, presumably between clenched teeth.

>> _If we have art today I’ll make a picture for you,_ << his daughter continued, unperturbed by the approach. >> _Mummy can send it from her phone or computer – wait, she wants to talk to you. What is your favourite dinosaur? Huh? Okay, I have to go. Love you! Bye!_ <<

“Love you too, Pumpkin,” he said after she had already handed the phone off.

>> _Banastre Tarleton,_ _whit in God's guid nam -_ << Kolina began.

He closed his eyes as the petit Scotswoman continued to scream, though, to his to his genuine shock, not at him.

  


* * *

  


“It is alright, Madam,” Richard Ferguson tried to assure her as displayed the badge in his otherwise empty, battered, brown leather wallet. “I’m a police inspector.”

“And I’m a workin’ mum who has to get her daughter off to kindergarten, yea?” the young woman returned, unimpressed by his credentials. “Give me back my fuckin’ phone, ye wanker!”

He looked at the device he held after again asking patience of the man who - to his complete horror upon hearing him called by a name he well knew - had served as a figure of envy for the past twelve minutes.

It had been thirty hours since he had rung his ex-wife telling her to put his boys on a plane; boys, he had been told, who had ceased being ‘his’ when the prioritization of his altogether stagnant professional life had torn his personal one apart. If her tired threats to deny him visitation were made and meant in earnest, Ferguson knew he had no legal recourse. He was behind on child support payments, and even with the deposit due to hit his account when Barclays opened for business that he expected would console his creditors, a court date would entail a drug screening which the inspector sorely doubted he would pass.

He had long since ceased questioning how hope could so quickly metamorphose into hate in the course of its materialization. Ellie Hewlett, under investigation for corporate fraud, had confessed both to her guilt and blessed virtue in paying him a heavy sum to intervene with the FBI on the behalf of Najma Abboud, a woman she had never met.

The bus ride to work reminded Ferguson that his reinstated wealth could not afford him that which he most wanted - the illusion of familiarity modern technology seemed to provide everyone else. Everyone, including the demon who had been ready to condemn an innocent woman due to the colour of her skin or the direction in which she face to pray. The treachery was that it had all been a rouse. It would have been comparatively simple for Ferguson to live with the reality that he had compromised his soul in an effort towards human compassion, but the major had never faced any threat from within. He had been paid by a Hewlett to behave like a Hewlett, to justify his own corruption with the suggestion of a good deed.

He hated Banastre Tarleton almost as much as he hated the truths the man framed as deception. Ferguson had to face that he was no better than the people he wished to see condemned. He hated that such was not even the main objective of the colonel’s manoeuvre. He had somehow managed from a self-assumed position of weakness to convince the Americans to release a political prisoner, securing for himself a moral victory over all those who played by the book and lost to its rule.

But one way or another, the little trickster would answer for his actions. The world was not a just place and whatever his game was, Tarleton did not seem to have properly addressed its steaks. At least, Ferguson granted himself, he still had that over the bastard. Lady Eleanor seemed ignorant to the fraud that Tarleton had committed with and against her private graces. As everyone born north of Hadrian’s Wall knew, nothing could prove quite as damning as a Hewlett whose power had been checked, a reality to which the trajectory of Ferguson’s own life could witness.

She had paid him off to do what any sinner would presume to be the right thing. Paid him to use his position to stop a cover-up from which she would have stood to profit. Insofar as she was aware, John Graves Simcoe and Edmund Hewlett could have escaped suspicion had she been willing to compromise upon the morals she claimed. Ferguson had initially assumed Tarleton’s play an attempt to save two of his school-friends from Tallmadge’s search. Instead, he had fooled Lady Eleanor into saving herself from condemnation, sacrificing what remained of their friendship to this end.

Richard Ferguson had bought into the bribe.

It would not have been right to extend himself the same doubt he had so long denied his enemies. He had acted for profit under the assumption that some ethnic minority on the other end of the world would benefit as well. The illusion of charity had been removed by an email from DI Tallmadge yet he still took a base comfort in what his account balance would soon be. Ferguson felt that for this he was worse than any of the Hewletts had ever been. They made sacrifices, not compromises. They suffered for their sins. As rich as they had made themselves, they still accomplished great acts of good.

Weighing intent was more than he could bear.

A war criminal had proven to Ferguson that a cartel boss had a kinder soul than he might ever aspire to. He proved himself a coward in his hope that the two would fulfil their destinies in being one another’s undoing before his badge would force him to condemn them both to a far cruller fate.

He hated Banastre Tarleton almost as much as he hated the truths the man framed as deception. He hated that a man he knew to hold fascist sympathies was a better friend and father than he himself would ever prove.

The woman whose phone he had confiscated made another reach of its return. Replaying the triumph of the day prior in his mind, the DI wondered if having a young woman deeply cross with him was worth any benefit that could come from speaking to a person of interest as she continued to berate in the same language he had grown accustom to hearing from the Liverpudlian he had on the line.

“Mummy!” the little girl with her scowled upon hearing her mother swear. She put her hands on her waist, mimicking the woman’s posture and adding weight to that which she whispered in horror, “that’s a _very bad_ word. No.”

Caught slightly off guard by this assessment, Ferguson found himself searching the girls face for Banastre Tarleton as an innocent question returned that all-to-identifiable artillery of crude argot. >> _Oi, who de fack ay yous, mate? Mad cunt – you place much value on your ability to procreate you best hand back the mobile, or’right? Have your boss give me a ring at a Christian hour if you need a bloody statement._ <<

“I’m in charge of this investigation -” Ferguson began. How he hated southern accents. He tried to step back, avoiding another attempt of assault, but was met with the resistance of a mass of fellow commuters who had joined in shouting the abuses the young mother would likely have a difficult time defending to her daughter at supper.

>> _And I’m frankly struggling to see how you see that as relevant. Would you let your kids curse? Poor form for little ladies, ‘innit? You might learn something from Georgie’s better manners, yous cunt. <<_

“I, ah – sure. No, no I wouldn’t. Let my children talk … as you yourself do, Colonel,” he stammered as commuters pushed and shoved their way past him, jostling for position as the carriage pulled to a stop, still surprised that this was a rule Tarleton chose to inforce.

>> _Right, apologies, shall we begin anew? <<_ the colonel asked, his accent altered in conformity with the airs he clearly did not feel himself obliged to. >> _Won’t you kindly return the mobile device you pilfered, my good sir? It would be much appreciated._ <<

The city bus opened its doors and the woman rephrased the demand, her tone turning from angry to desperate though the language did not alter with her child’s disapproval. Ferguson questioned who he had become and if he had anyone left to blame but himself. “Wait,” he said, uncertain as to whom he spoke specifically.

The two had boarded at the stop after his. In the madness of the morning commute on crowded public transit, the inspector would not have paid either much mind save for the fact that they had shared the seat in front of his. The woman, whom he imagined he would have thought of as a girl herself were it not for the child she toted along, might have been attractive once; she might have been attractive still if not for what seemed an organized effort to eradicate her natural features. Her long hair had been bleached into straw, coloured like candyfloss and packed under a cap Ferguson guessed she wore to conceal her roots – brown, he assumed, like that of her daughter’s. They shared the same piercing blue eyes, though layers of black liner which the hour did not warrant blanketed those of the young mother. Ferguson had wondered if she was a prostitute, if the single practical element of her wardrobe would be disregarded after dropping the smaller girl off at school. He noted the shield of his alma mater on the oversized black sweatshirt she wore over leggings of the same shade. It was barely long enough to cover her rear. In it, she barely looked old enough to begin university applications. Although he had no desire towards her, he felt filthy for staring and saddened by the assumptions he had made and the culture that had standardized them. He had overheard her quizzing her daughter on the spelling of words she was meant to learn and remembered doing the same with Patrick and Sean in what felt another lifetime. The inspector averted his attention to the roadside shops they sped past, trying to recreate in his mind all that he had lost, trying to ignore the price his poor fellow passenger might be paying on the street that her child could smile and laugh as she did. She had probably been quite pretty once, and happy too, or so he imagined.

Before the bus had come to its next stop, the woman’s phone rang. Ferguson watched her face twist with annoyance, reflected in the inside of the buss window, black and pale paintings obscuring the greys of the buildings, street and sky. ‘ _It’s Daddy,_ ’ she told the child. ‘ _Tell him I want to talk to him when you are done_.’ Ferguson knew the tone. He knew little else from his own ex. The recollection prompted him to continue creating a narrative for the pair of strangers, one which allowed him a few minutes of again supposing moral superiority. The ex-boyfriend, he told himself, had likely just gotten out of jail, lived on his grandmother’s couch and spent his welfare on weed and take-away. He had gotten the girl pregnant at school, forcing her to exchange her dream of the University of Edinburgh for a small mouth she suddenly found herself expected to fill.

Unlike himself however, it seemed the young woman managed to provide for her child. Ferguson saw his own reflection in the double-pained glass and felt as dark as the clouds that covered the city with their imminent threat.

Whatever the absent man’s sins, the exchange the inspector overheard him having with his daughter broke his heart by reminding him of the one he had not been permitted with his own sons prior to them getting on a plane with his ex-wife and the man she lived with. For a moment, he lost track of the two kids in the seat in front of him as his mind waltzed with and around the words which he feared he would never be able to voice to his own children. He wondered what his boys were learning in school, if they would share it with him as merrily as the little girl did with her father. How long, he wondered, would it be before such smiles no longer existed in earnest between him and his boys, before their weekly telephone conversations became monosyllabic and disinterested, before they casually began calling the man they lived with ‘Dad’  - even when they spoke to him. It would sound apologetic until they learned to weaponize it, or so he imagined.

But that, of course, was all dependant on if his ex-wife ever again let their sons near the phone when he rang.

The pink-clad toddler with bows in her braided hair handed the mobile to her mother when she asked a second time through a clenched tooth smile, no doubt directed at the man, who from the sounds of it, was working on the other side of the Atlantic rather than sitting on some sofa in Scotland. The moment she spoke the name of the Colonel, Ferguson found himself returned to the office though ten stops still physically separated him from this destination. He took the phone from the woman’s hand and found in the action chaos comparable to what his colleagues over in Glasgow dealt with daily.

 >> _Tic, tic Inspector …_ << another yawn came from the line he held to his ear.

“Ferguson,” he informed him sharply. “We’ve met before on several occasions. Um. Coronel, can I ask that you hold for just a minute?”

Without waiting for a response, he shoved the phone into his trouser pocket and proceeded out the sliding door directly into one of the city’s busiest intersections. The little girl, he panicked, had joined the crowd of people making their way out into Haymarket. Her mother, undoubtedly petrified, raced after her. Ferguson followed, quickened by the continued slurs and abuses shouted from fellow passengers.

“Georgie!” the young woman cried as the girl walked out into the street in true Edinburgh fashion, without paying oncoming traffic any mind. For a second the inspector feared she would stop at the sound of her mother’s scream. He reasoned that it was safer for her to keep moving, at least until reaching the island where tourists who he presumed to be German by their odd adherence to traffic singles waited on a small green figure to shine on the opposite side of the road way instructing them to walk. Georgie did not wait with them. To Ferguson’s relief, she did not even stop as she shouted back that she had to get to school. He knew it was safer for the wee small girl to kept marching now that she had committed to the cross. There were enough people on the street that motorists were forced to travel at the posted speed. Ferguson did not trust them to locate their breaks if the child were to break her pace.

He caught up to Georgie’s mum before they reached her daughter on the street’s far corner. Georgie had since assumed the same disapproving posture which he had first seen on the bus. She stood with her hands on her hips in front of a small kiosk selling crisps, pre-paid phone cards, and the sorts of papers more interested in Edmund Hewlett’s surprising engagement to an American bartender than the senator who had gone missing in the same small town. “I plan to give this back truly, I only – I couldn’t find a working number … for, for the colonel,” Ferguson tried when the woman pointed to a window advertisement, commenting that he could ring the colonies himself, from his own phone for a rate of 12 pence pro minute. He followed her as she entered the store with her daughter now in toe, buying two cucumber sandwiches, a bottle of milk that was meant to taste like strawberries, a litre of IRN BRU, and almost as a second thought, one of the multiple newspapers with the same photo of the happy couple pulled from Facebook - a testament to the standards of modern journalism. “I just love her,” the young woman gushed. The shopkeeper looked at the publication with the same distain Ferguson himself felt for the whole charade. From the wall behind the till, a framed photograph of Queen Elizabeth looked down upon the day’s news with shared disgust. “If she saves us from the reign of Duchess Edna,” the owner muttered before returning his attention to a game on his mobile.

“Have you by chance spoken to either Edmund Hewlett or -” Ferguson spoke into the device he had stolen; worried the line had gone dead.

“Well come on then!” the woman interrupted, pulling him by his necktie across a side street before he could get his question out. “I’ll not have your business interfering with mine, Sir!”

“And what is your business, ma’am?” he asked.

>> _She is a student_ ,<< Tarleton offered from across the world. Ferguson was surprised and relieved to hear his voice again. He himself would likely have hung up during the fiasco.

“I meant your wife,” he stammered as he tried to keep pace with the young woman with candyfloss hair balancing two rucksacks on her shoulder and a plastic bag on her arm as her daughter skipped along and spoke excitedly about her schoolmates.

>> _No_ ,<< came his colleague’s correction.

“Ex?”

>> _Not exactly. Kolina is a friend … we have a kid together. It’s not as complicated as you are want to make it. Now,_ << he seemed to swallow >> _is this in regard to Major Abboud?_ <<

“Ah,” Unsure where his feet were taking him, Ferguson had forgotten where he wanted to begin.

>> _Ah?_ _Christ, you are well placed to be in a room full of Hewletts_. << Tarleton snickered at the sudden stutter. The detective considered for a moment that both reactions might be audible manifestations of fear in reaction to Scotland’s most famous surname. Perhaps in Tarleton’s case there was something more substantial that he hid behind his ever-present suggestion of cruelty; his smirk a constant display of schadenfreude, more conspicuous and off-putting in itself than the crippled hand he made no attempt at concealing. Perhaps, Ferguson reasoned, the grin was a disguise he assumed to some end, rather than a threat in and of itself.

“I’ve made some inquires, Coronel Tarleton, regarding your alleged plot -”

>> _Splendid!_ << the younger man chirped, still mimicking the posh manner of speech - sounding no more convincing in his effort than American teenagers did in their attempts to copy a dialect that they understood to be standard ‘English’ (but which likely only existed for the purposes of the cursed Harry Potter franchise.) Ferguson imagined for a moment that the attaché who made no secret of his antipathy for the people across the pond (and those across the Channel, and those across multiple other divides without a physical barrier) was making some attempt at integrating with and endearing himself to the people of Washington. He nearly laughed until remembering those whom the loud little populist shared a name with, privately reliving a nightmare of the nineties when a possibility had existed of the Tarletons taking up residence on Downing Street whilst the least of them continued in startling political fashion,  >> _Then you know the matter has already been sorted. You may also be aware that I’m being duly punished for my role in that plot, something I imagine I have you to thank for. Bit of a sadist after all, aren’t we Fregs?_ <<

“Bloody hell are you on about?” Ferguson demanded, incensed at having his moral character again called into question by such a demon, noting the language borrowed from an insult he had afforded the man on the last occasion they had spoken. He wondered to what extent this cold war was personal on either of their accounts.

>> _Brussels._ << Tarleton replied flatly.

“You mistake me, Sir,” Ferguson said, stopping in his tracks.

The airport, as he well knew, was likely the best argument in support of Brittan’s proposed withdrawal from the European Union. Navigating one security point only to arrive at the next was something logic ordinarily instructed would cause one to miss a connecting flight, but the continentals in their ingenuity made up for lost time by routinely delaying take-offs by several hours. Sometimes, the Germans would dictate affairs and policies in the same sense they did in the parliamentary council, grounding their aircraft for days so that socialists could cry over their already generous retirement packages. Richard Ferguson was frankly surprised that this was not a talking point for the politicians who had steaked their fortunes on the Brexit campaign, ignoring in the moment that, excepting Tarleton, most potential ‘leave’ voters had never themselves left the UK.

Perhaps it was the accusation alone. Perhaps it was the conversation he had had with Ellie’s racketeers day before. Perhaps it was the one he overheard on the buss a half hour ago and the pressing concern that someone like Banastre Tarleton had heathier relationships than those he had managed, but Richard Ferguson felt a surge of empathy for an enemy who, in his own way, served the same Crown.  Tarleton was a criminal but everyone was deserving of some mercy. Ferguson perhaps needed to demonstrate to himself he was still capable of that feat.

“When I was a teenager,” he told him, “I flew to South Africa for a Lion’s tournament. The return was through Brussels and after two days of waiting in a terminal, my mates and I decided to take a holiday bus to Amsterdam and flew from there to London, and booked a night rail back up to Edinburgh. Don’t wait,” he cautioned. “Nothing ever takes off in Belgium. _Nothing._ It is futile to hold out hope. Ship your baggage by post if it cannot fit into overhead storage and once you make it through passport control, get out of the airport itself as quickly as possible and book the rest of your passage by another means. It makes no sense to do so ahead of time because there is no telling when your flight will actually land and how long it will take to make it though.

“I had the same thing about a decade later when I’d won tickets to the World Cup in Germany. You’d think the radio station would have sent me through Frankfurt but in an effort to save some thirty quid I would up in Brussels once more. After fifteen hours, I hired a taxi to take me to the broader – not trusting the Belgian trains to be any more functional than their aircraft – and ultimately found myself in Munchkin-glad-beer about an hour before kick-off. It was a group-stage match. The connecting flight I was meant to take, as I later discovered, did not take off until well after the tournament ended. I ended up having to secure my own way home.” Swallowing, he added, “We have our differences you and I, but I would never wish that upon you – upon any human being.”

>> _Really? I can think of a handful I’d happily send into an inferno so bleak Dante did not dare to dream,_ << Tarleton scoffed. This admission did not surprise Ferguson in the least and caused him to feel a bit ill about offering his condolences. >> _Thanks, truly, for your advice, but the weekend was not as kind as I had hoped and as such, at present, I simply don’t have those kinds of means. As I am flying for business, I have no choice but to follow the plan the Foreign Office has designated - <<_

He sounded weary, worn down with worldly concerns. Ferguson found this hint at honesty as unsettling as the cold smile Tarleton wore where other men would scream. “Colonel, with all due respect, I think you and I both know such has never been much of a determining factor in your choices,” he paused. “This – your return ticket – I assure you, it wasn’t booked at my request. I need you alive if I’m to conduct an interview, and while I realise there is little I can do to convince you of the contrary, I wouldn’t wish continental Europe on my worst … enemy. I – I hazard to imagine the sort of man who truly would.”

Ferguson spotted a car parked illegally in front of the corner kindergarten ahead, surrounded by small children in play clothes and a few boys and girls wearing the same uniform as his sons would have been dressed in were they not currently at a holiday resort in some former Yugoslavian country with their mother and the man he was convinced they already called ‘Dad.’ The commotion around the vehicle lead him to instantly recognise the driver as one of the men who had recently broken into his flat, though the Adidas sweats had been replaced by a suit of the Italian wool variety. “Can I call you back?” he asked Tarleton, “Will you answer?”

>> _If I am not in a meeting. Yea. Sure, fuck it, why not?_ << he laughed _._ >> _You saved me from Kolina’s tirade de jour and anyway, ‘tis always divine to be reminded that I am not the single biggest prick in the Queen’s service. Cheers, then._ <<

Ferguson sighed, keeping his eyes on the hitman, having to agree with Tarleton’s breezy assessment.

The slender man before him and a more portly colleague had kicked in his door at shortly before four the pervious afternoon, bringing with them the beverage of the hour. Richard had been ordered at gunpoint to sit at the small table littered with the remnants of microwavable dinners that often doubled as his work desk. The man who spoke must have been close to himself in age, perhaps a bit younger. He was of Asian descent with a London accent, the elegant sort unbecoming of the red tracksuit he then wore. Ripping the landline from the wall before taking the stool opposite Richard’s, he made a slight nod at the man who had taken up most of the open kitchenette with his girth. After filling the electric water cooker with tap, the other hoodlum donning the same uniform disappeared into his mother’s bedroom. Richard begged that she be spared from whatever this was. ‘ _You’re a fucking disgrace,_ ’ the southerner replied. ‘ _Look at this place – squalor unfit for habitation. Percy! Did we bring anything for the rubbish?_ ’

_‘The order was just for tea and biscuits, and milk - assuming the detective had let his expire. I see why that was among the boss’s concerns.’_

It took a moment for it register with Richard that the two were not speaking in code. Whilst the posh-sounding Pakistani spent the next five hours explaining the negative effects of drug use - making thinly veiled threats at Richard’s person all the while - his colleague treated his mother to tea and began cleaning the house by way of robbing it in the most civil of fashions – asking the former Lady Melgrave’s permission to remove certain items from the premises. Percy left her correspondence and records alone at her request, placed the player in her bedroom at his on initiative and, from what Richard could tell from where he sat, replaced the curtains on her window and the sheets on her bed. His mother’s books were moved to where she could easily reach them from her wheelchair.

By the time everything had been vacuumed, swept, scrubbed, mopped and bleached; by the time the rubbish (including the diagrams the covered the living room walls and windows) had been taken out, the space almost looked like a proper home. Almost. Richard’s bed wound up back out on the street side where he had found it. ‘ _Does this surprise you?_ ’ the man asked when his colleague had finished. ‘ _We are used to creating and disposing corpses. We know how to clean up a crime scene. This though – this was considerably more work for Percy, I imagine. Here_ ,’ he passed Ferguson a deposit receipt stating that two million pounds had been paid to his account for ‘antiques’. _‘My employer requests that you never ring her up for the purposes of recreational drug use. I personally would prefer to never have to come back to this part of town, so lets you and I understand one another. Should my esteemed colleague and I have need to return, we are going to start off by breaking everything you have left._ ’ He offered his hand. Petrified, Richard returned the gesture. The hitman griped his fingers he offered a little too tightly, causing the fallen inspector’s knuckles to crack. He would not have needed this display of comparative strength to understand that Ellie Hewlett’s associates had no interest in destroying his mother’s old opera records.

Seeing him again, his fingers still stung as he began to text himself Tarleton’s new number, surprised to find his number within the woman’s contacts. “Madam,” he called out as she and her daughter joined the group of other curious children and their parents and teachers who had gathered around the beautiful woman emerging from the limousine. Ferguson approached with hesitation. Hewlett greeted him with a slight tilt of her head before returning to her public with considerably more warmth. Georgie Tarleton, or so Ferguson learned when another little girl offered Lady Eleanor a homemade cake, had been anxious to get to class that morning for her school-friend’s fourth birthday.

“This looks so delicious,” Ellie smiled as she lifted the child whose birthday it was, returning the cake to a woman Ferguson assumed was either her teacher or grandmother. “But it would make me very sad to think of your friends not getting to enjoy your hard work. You know,” she winked. “We princesses must always be generous and kind – and you are a princess too, Nora. Every girl is on her birthday – no matter how old she gets. It’s a rule. And as a princess, you need to treat everyone with kindness. Ah, I do so wish I could stay for your party – but I think I am leaving cake and kingdom in good hands,” she smiled as she placed the girl down. “Patel?” she beaconed softly to her associate, “Can you help me with this, please?”

The man who had given the most impressive drug prevention speech Ferguson had ever heard struggled for a moment with the clasp of Ellie’s chain, which she then gifted to the wee Princess Nora. “I wish I had a tiara for you, my dear, but you’ll accept this instead, right? Happy Birthday, Darling! May you enjoy many more.”

The girl threw her arms around Ellie’s now-bare neck, thanking her for the spontaneous gift. Before rising again, Ellie greeted Georgie, who kissed her cheeks quickly before returned her attention to the cake for which she came. Kolina pulled her back, gave her a sandwich and the strawberry flavoured milk from her thin plastic tote and insisted on a kiss goodbye and a promise that she would be good, both of which her daughter gave freely. The smaller children swarmed to the jungle gym when the school gates were opened.

“Every girl is a princess on her birthday?” Kolina repeated to Ellie with a smirk.

“Quite,” the noblewoman laughed under her breath. “My family has been shooting our Christmas portraits every October for as long as memory serves – I’ve gotten to play princess every Halloween for the whole of my life. Ah! Just once I’d like to do something comparatively more creative … a sexed up version of some medial profession.”

“I was a slutty cop last year,” Kolina winked, adding, “Sometimes I forget you share a birthday with the devil.”

“And here I imagined that the one biographical detail everyone knows about me is that I am a twin. Apropos,” she shifted, “when you next speak to Ban, Darling, do give him my thanks for his intervening on Eugene’s behalf. You’ll understand, I have a few pressing matters that make it impossible to ring him up myself at present and I know he phones Georgie daily.”

“Well, I would do,” Kolina said loudly, shooting Ferguson a glare through what remained of the crowd. The inspector approached, timidly handed her the mobile he had commandeered, apologising once more as she snatched it back. “You have no idea who I am, do you?” she demanded of him. Before Ferguson could inquire as to why he should, she returned her attention to the device. “Oh. He’s already hung up. We will have words later, mark me,” Kolina swore to the man no longer holding the line.

“Ah – Fergie,” Ellie greeted sharply with a painted smile. Return her attentions to the young mother she asked, “What is this about, then?”

“This fuck once turned his best friends into the police,” Kolina answered of her child’s father. “And this wanker”, she expanded, again using the epithet by which she would henceforth always refer to Ferguson by, “overheard Georgie talking to her dad on the bus and stole the damn thing from me that he could – I don’t actually know? Help Ban plan some sort of escape from an airport? To think this is where my taxes are going -”

Ellie did not seem to be listening. “Lina,” she interrupted, her voice deceptively light and musical. “I recall specifically asking you not to read through the documentation I had you gather and distribute. It is of a highly sensitive nature and it serves no one to discuss it on the street. Ban did not know what his words had done - he still does not to the extent of my knowledge - and I would quite appreciate it if you kept it that way. Am I understood?”

Kolina nodded. Her expression spoke to a reality that at least part of the relationship between herself and the effortlessly elegant Eleanor was of a professional nature. For all of the deceptions that she covered herself in, Richard Ferguson’s most formidable enemy had not secured her seat on the board without bloodying her own hands - she had confessed that much to him when she was but a girl.

“Now, do you need a lift?” Ellie asked.

“I’m fine,” Kolina seemed to evade.

“Are you certain?”

“The university is in the opposite direction of where you are headed,” the young mother claimed as she removed a parcel from the rucksack which she had not handed off to her daughter, shoving what remained of her breakfast selections in the space its absence created. “Anyway, I’ve been trying to read the new chapter of Turn for the better part of the weekend, but -”

“I understand,” Ellie nodded. “Is there a new one out?”

“From Friday,” Kolina shrugged, “I’ve only gotten -”

“Don’t tell me, I have not looked at it at all yet. We’ll have a proper chat when we’ve both made time for reading,” she prattled gaily.

“What is Turn?” Ferguson interjected, wanting to hear Ellie’s interpretation.

“What the fuck kind of detective are you?” Kolina demanded, hands on her hips, “Seriously, how the hell did they give you that badge and -”

“It is this brilliant work of friend-fiction,” Ellie clarified, “I mean that in the best and worst way possible. Right now, Setauket it is absolutely ridiculous in itself: the senator who saved my best friend’s life went missing without a trace, my older brother - heir presumptive to the largest conglomeration of duchies in Britain - is marrying himself to a bartender for some residence extension, and this woman – this Abigail Ingram, is writing a period drama about spies and petticoats. It is like … how dose one possibly translate _that_ into _this_?” she paused. “She did make Simcoe a murderous, lustful psychopath though – which I rather appreciate.”

“And why is that?”

“Ah, it took everyone in my little clique more than a decade to know him for what he is, I just think the image Turn provides is rather accurate – and I do, so, so very much hope that Edmund’s Anna is half the self-serving, manipulative,” she hummed rather than swear, her eyes dancing from side to side “ the novel paints her as if my dear brother is serious about making her his bride. You need a bit of that to survive in our world. Fabienne Bouchard doesn’t have it within her. Edna’s Douglass- Chaplin and my Campbell don’t possess enough of it either to get far with our family. It would simply make these awkward little get-togethers a wee bit more interesting, if I am to be frank,” Ellie smarted. “Now, Inspector, on that note, do you fancy a lift? I imagine we are ultimately going to the same address.”

“Uh  I – I guess.”

“Cheers, Ells. You should choose your friends better and you own me a new ink cartridge,” Kolina hugged her.

“And you should do better to remember that the worst thing about a person is not necessarily the truest thing about them,” Ellie returned the embrace with something of a caution that the inspector supposed was meant for him as well.

“Whatever,” Kolina replied, looking at Ferguson. “Right, I guess we will be in touch. Take better cares towards yer mum, Wanker.”

Unsure how to respond, he simply waved until she turned the corner, eyes fixed on a smartphone, presumably reading an account of who Edmund and Anna might be if they wore petticoats and perukes.

  


* * *

  


The two women had met eight years prior in the back of a similar vehicle. Ellie had been up from Oxford to celebrate Christmas, by which Ferguson knew it was meant she had spent her October birthday in the same way she spent all others, smiling with people she did not see if she could otherwise help it, pretending to be a family in front of press core in a pre-arranged photo-op, scenes that looked to be set around the castle but were in fact staged within feet of one another. She had spotted Kolina at a bus stop through a tinted window en route from the airport to the circus. The girl had been crying, pinned up against the Plexiglas wind-guard, an older man’s hand up the skirt of her school uniform.

“I did what anyone would do,” Ellie claimed with a practiced nonchalance. “I asked Patel to stop, got out of the car and ensured that this predator would never touch another girl.”

“You killed him,” Ferguson interjected.

“Perhaps. Perhaps I simply inquired as to his address and sent a few of my associates over to clean the place up a bit. Apropos, did your mother like the tea I sent?” Her lips hazarded into a smile as her eyebrows rose in recognition.

When he did not answer, she continued that upon learning the assailant was living with the victim and her mother, she took the lass to a battered women’s shelter and helped her file a claim with the police (something Ferguson was later able to verify.) In the time that had since elapsed, the two had kept in touch, Ellie providing part of her university tuition in exchange for an odd project here and again.

“Espionage?”

“Not in the sense that you are imagining it or that Ms Ingram does. Did you know, Inspector, that in this day and age there is far more money to be made with the sale of data than there is with drugs? Grey area too … legally speaking. I’m a bit proud if I dare to admit it to have been part of that.”

“Breaking into my home and email server is pretty black and white.”

“So is accepting bribes, but here we find ourselves,” she smiled. “Kolina didn’t break in to your flat. She made a mistake and is paying for it through community service which includes bringing warm meals to your mum.”

That was why she was annoyed he did not recognise her, he realized. The world’s worst never seemed to let pass a chance to remind him that he was of their numbers.

“May I offer you something to drink, Inspector? Coffee, tea, champagne -”

“I thought you didn’t drink.”

“I don’t among people I can’t trust.”

“I don’t think I have anything to celebrate.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Do you … trust me, Ellie?” Ferguson inquired after a moment.

“I trust that you want to see me in jail. You know I’ve always rather liked that about you Fergs, that naivety that allows you to imagine people can be held accountable for their actions. It’s charming. Oh, do promise me you’ll never change.”

He nodded slowly. “Is that why you don’t trust Coronel Tarleton or Ms Gwillim?”

“It is not that I don’t _trust_ Effie … but I have my doubts about her judgement. She is careful when it comes to business concerns and societal ones as they pertain to me personally, but frequently fails to respect possible future outcomes of the public interest pieces she pens or prints. Mary knows it is all rubbish and we can laugh about it together, but her daughter, my godchild, is at that age where everything feels like an alienation. I don’t want Marie to be under the impression that I had anything to do with her mum and sort-of-step-dad separating when she has so few adults in her life she trusts right now. It is things … things like what Effie sometimes prints about Ban and I which prevent me from telling her anything, you know … personal. If lies are destructive think of what truths would do.”

He had been all morning. He asked anyway.

“What would they do?”

“Hopefully we will never find out,” she laughed without smiling.

“I think deep down you want nothing more.”

“Than normal relationships with my dearest friends? Don’t we all.”

“Than to make it all stop.”

“I think you are projecting,” she challenged.

“I could lose my job for that, you know … for the files you sent to DS Yilmaz. And I think your little hacker was right, you need to choose your friends more carefully.”

Ellie leaned forward, “I’ll confess to anything you wish if you agree to leave her out of it.”

“Why would you do that? Ellie, I swear – I don’t understand you at all. Did you bother reading my report before -”

“Of course I did, and yes – I think you do. Understand me that is. What would my goal be in sending an email to a copper who otherwise has no outlet to gather information regarding the one case in which both my brother and John Graves Simcoe appear? Simple. You were right – neither were guilty of anything half so severe as that which they are now being accused. The record you kept shows that John only intervened as much as he did out of a misguided notion that I needed protection and that my brother attempted to mislead the search out of a sense of guilt, thinking himself somehow responsible for behaviour that John at no point exhibited. I hazard to guess the same is happening now in New York. John found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time thanks to some skirt and Edmund assumed the worst of him. Tallmadge and his team will compare your evidence to their own; separate the two for questioning, make Edmund think that John betrayed him in hopes of optioning a confession -”

“How can you continue to be mates with a man who all but told me -” he began.

“How to extort me? He knows me better than anyone else does – well, anyone but you,” she smiled. “Ban didn’t know what was going on, by the way. I should doubt he does even now. And if he did … well, maybe he was betting on you making enough of a mess of it as to allow me to exploit my predicament.”  

“It bothers me. I know you and Tarleton both and I cannot imagine you being in a room together under any regular circumstance. Socially, politically, ethically, you are about as opposite as any two people can be before differences become similarities. So what is it?”

“I have considerably more control over my own press than he does, Inspector. Don’t believe everything you read,” she paused. “You ever been given Effie Gwillim’s antithesis on truth?”

“With half the questions I ask,” Ferguson muttered.

“…Her specifically or in a more general sense?”

“Hard to say, harder to tell. Where are we going?” New Town was in the opposite direction of the destination he thought he had been promised.

“Post Office,” Ellie chirped. “Breakfast … if you want some.”

“Are you hungry?” he asked. The small sounds his own stomach made reminded him that he had neglected dinner the night before.

“Most menus don’t cater to my taste, but I could go for a coffee.”

“I always forget that about you. Most vegans I know -”

“I’ve never understood that. I never found any topic as impossibly and imposingly dull as listing foods one won’t eat, or pretending that there is anything moral to it. It is a trend like any other. I only partake because I find it a convenient means of avoidance. I’ve always seemed to struggle with eating in general. It is always ‘it is not attractive to be so thin’ or ‘you know she is anorexic, right?’ or some other assessment everyone feels qualified to give. When people know that I don’t partake of any animal products, however, I’m suddenly granted with this artificial beauty of both body and soul. If I don’t have time to eat or simply forget, it is like ‘well who can blame her, tofu is disgusting,’” she rolled her eyes.

“I wish that was not your experience,” Ferguson said solemnly. If Eleanor Hewlett could be bothered to feign belief in higher morals he did not share, it might be easier to ignore the ethics that he had been shown evaded him entirely. He had to break her. He had a badge. There world was not a just place.

“I wish we did not live in a world where women rate themselves and each other by how their waistlines compare. One way or another this is every girl’s experience and we all find individual ways to cope. Veganism is wide spread enough that I am never asked to explain it and people are typically gleeful that I don’t, present company excluded.”

“I wasn’t making a moral judgement. That is more your terrain.”

“You judge me constantly.”

“Because the law requires it.”

“Not enough, clearly.”

Perhaps there was a measure of truth to this, too.

“Here,” she said, handing him the package Kolina had given her. “You can open it. It is a list of every patient in the New York metropolitan area who has been prescribed oxycodone since December of last year. A pharmaceutical lobbyist who is currently the subject of an ongoing investigation sold it to a man with whom I’ll no longer be doing business. I’m just forwarding this information along as a way of thanking Inspector Tallmadge for what I hope will be his continued cooperation.”

“Tallmadge isn’t on that case anymore,” Ferguson said, flipping through a list of hundreds of names and addresses.

“I never said I planned to send it to Tallmadge,” Ellie smiled. “You’ll see. Tomorrow afternoon, I should think. You might take the day off.”

“I can’t just hand this back to you.”

“You think too highly of yourself to avert the forces of justice because you imagine that you don’t like me very much,” she smarted.

“I _imagine_ this has more to do with your wanting to protect Edmund, John and Ban form further suspicion than it does with any effort towards law, order and authority.”

“Ban?” she blinked, effectively removing her mask. “No, he has nothing to do -”

“Thanks to you he is one of DS Yilmaz’s prime suspects,” the inspector informed her lightly. He had been paid by a Hewlett to behave like a Hewlett. He was beginning to take compliment in the comparison when he saw how easy it was to introduce Lady Eleanor to her demons as she had often hosted balls for his. Perhaps he was becoming a bit of a sadist after all. Perhaps his badge demanded he be one.

“But he didn’t … have anything to do with … Arnold went missing days before he -” she stammered.

“In the spirit of honesty, I really do not think he had a role to play, either. Not initially, at least. Your immediate reaction tells me you think Edmund and/or John certainly did, however.” 

Ellie’s dark eyes widened in recognition.

“I assume that goes a ways further into why you sent Yilmaz my files. So tell me, Princess,” Ferguson grinned. “What exactly did I miss all of those years ago?”

The Towne Car rolled to a stop.

  


* * *

  


They bantered to keep from screaming, to delay questions and accusations in favour of an illusion of the normal they had long known and never cherished.

John Graves Simcoe stood over a table holding a tape measurer while the host whose hospitality he had all but exhausted flipped through a codex. “I understand the game,” he told Hewlett. “I simply fail to comprehend how you and Wakefield have the patience or rather desire to spend your free time engaged in it.”

Since laying Mary in her bed and leaving her to the lies they had once shared, Simcoe had taken to strategy, allowing his mind to be consumed by battle plans, forcing Hewlett’s legions to line up against each other. He squinted as he measured the distance and impact of his latest roll.

The game itself was long and needlessly complex; a needed distraction from the real war they were losing, from the terms of their defeat. Hewlett had returned to Whitehall wearing an ankle monitor after Sunday had turned into Monday, offering nothing verbal of his police interrogation or the hours that separated its end from his return. “I told you that you would hate it,” he said of Warhammer.

“It makes no difference; I’m not letting you play.”

“It might make for more of a competition.”

“I appreciate the modal auxiliary,” Simcoe smirked. “You are aware that I pose a far superior adversary to myself than you could ever hope to prove. I’ve been at this for hours and I simply wish to see which of my strategies -”

“Oh there is no denying that you do more towards your own destruction that anyone else would ever think to,” Hewlett spat before shifting, “are you using metric or imperial units – ah, never mind.” He took a deep breath before adding, “It is not something I would brag about.”

“No. Because you would have no need to. You walk out of an interrogation you could have predicted with an ankle monitor and I -”

“They have the files from the incident we were cautioned to never speak of,” Hewlett rubbed his temples. For all the energy that the prince had expanded in assuming that his brother’s strategic marriage to a general’s daughter would serve to exonerate them all, Simcoe imagined that the case in question must have at least crossed his mind. He could have prepared a defence. The fact that it seemed he had not so much as thought to do so was distressing and demoralizing. It gave Simcoe cause to question his sometimes-friend’s commitment. With Hewlett having declared for him, he worried that the war would prove longer and bloodier without any benefit. It had to end. He had to win, and win quickly. Mary Woodhull had already been made causality. He could not, and would not see her hurt again. He wanted to have her, to help her, and he could not do either were he to remain engaged against Tallmadge for much longer. The detective inspector, after all, held the higher ground and commanded better men.

“I know” Simcoe belittled, angered that his closest ally was not up to task. “I was questioned about it as well. Disappointed – I honestly thought the ordeal would prove more of a challenge.”

“Ferguson claims that Ellie sent the files,” Hewlett replied flatly.

“What possible reason would she have for doing that?”  

“Revenge, perhaps,” Hewlett muttered, not meeting his eyes. “Did you ever talk to Tarleton about what we did?”

“I never talked to anyone about it, unlike yourself,” Simcoe spat.

“I didn’t say much to the police, they – they just caught me off guard. DS Yilmaz, you see … she thinks that I’ve been trying to point the search to Ban Tarleton.”

“What, because of the Everton jersey?” he squinted.

“It is more complicated than that, “Hewlett relayed. “Turns out, he has been in Washington for a few days. Served under Arnold in the operation that cost him his command. His commission is due to expire in a few months and … the police think he might have something to do with Arnold’s disappearance. That maybe he is trying to pin it on us, or that we are trying to pin it on him.”

It was impossible and untrue, but upon reflection, Simcoe would not put it past his childhood friend to do something of the sort and could see how Tallmadge had come on this theory. It was the kind of manoeuvre he might have himself made before he had been forced to consider consequence as more than an abstract concept. It was not difficult to imagine Hewlett attempting the same, which came as a comfort as cutting as it felt. Contradictions, Simcoe maintained, ought to cancel one another out. When it came to Edmund Hewlett, they never seemed to do so.

“That is a turn I didn’t see coming,” he admitted. “Are you trying to exploit it?” They both stood at the desk, staring at the tin soldiers Simcoe imagined as firing shells. He returned to the fantasy he had unwillingly extended to Hewlett, speaking to him as though brass pins covered their shoulder sashes and the breast of their dress coats. It was too easy. He had the feeling that he could dispose of a man for reasons that did not extend beyond resentment. Studying Hewlett, he gathered they both felt the rush.

“I was trying to lead Tallmadge to André, but that is impossible giving that we don’t know where he is,” Hewlett frowned. “We should have called Rogers on Friday. He is so mad about the penalty we handed to Middle County that he did not even come up to the station to give a statement. If he knows where André is, little chance he will tell us now.”

He was right. Simcoe did not want to acknowledge his own error or be reminded that he had made one. “I ask again – are you intending to put this on Tarleton?”

Hewlett was silent for a long while before meeting the question with another. “What would you do?” he asked so softly it felt like the surrender of a command. Simcoe, who had long wished for the man to resign in shame, needed the company of the warrior he contradictorily suspected the weakling of being. He needed an example reaffirmed. Kind men did not win wars.

“I spent the better part of my life wishing that you would be brought to justice whilst simultaneously wishing that you would return to protect me from a danger I long since have not faced. Tonight both came to fruition and I … never hated myself more,” he confessed. “I can’t defend Tarleton, but he has experienced the world in ways I have not and I don’t believe it is mine to judge him either. We were friends, once. I’ll talk to him.”

“John, I’m so sorry,” Hewlett sighed, pained by his words or the actions that made him feel they were warranted.

“If you mean it - that you are sorry - for the love of Christ will you stop reminding me of it?” Simcoe spat. “It makes me miss you … it makes me miss who I imagine you were before we met. I fear I may have killed you, too.” He felt his fingers tap against his upper thigh. He felt Hewlett’s eyes on them.

“Maybe you did. But maybe it is just the cycle of nature, death, rebirth – unconcerned with and unconnected to the individual.”

“Is that how you wash your hands of sin?” he smarted after a moment.

“No,” Hewlett hazarded to smile. “I do that by falling in love with the girl I meant to marry for a Green Card, by gambling with my freedom to force Appleby’s to drop their interest in the property she asked me to buy for her. I do that by spying on the French, getting two of my best friends in on an insider trading scheme, confessing to embezzlement to ensure that if this blows up, I’ll be the only one to face punishment, all while trying to hide the fact that you and Mrs. Woodhull played a part in Arnold’s disappearance. I could go on, but I take you point. No amount of wrongs could ever make a right. The ankle monitor though, that only has to do with my admitting that I crossed state lines to help Akinbode work through a break up. You have – I’m certain – countless reasons not to trust me. Tallmadge only has this one. Maybe two … I admitted to having no contact with Tarleton since he -”

“Killed those kids?” Simcoe asked in a way that assumed the answer.

“Proposed to my sister,” Hewlett finished before allowing the question to twist his kaleidoscope of expressions, made more manifest by the bruises that stained his pale skin. “What kids?” he gaped.

“What proposal?”

“One that by all indications she was smart to reject.”

“I’m not sure. I knew they were in love before I really knew either of them. Nice to think Ban at least had it figured out at one point.” It was nice to think that Hewlett, too, was still governed by a certain coldness which Simcoe had always suspected him. Hewlett was either his greatest creation, or he was Hewlett’s. The man admitted in not so many words that he would make a pawn out of a non-combatant without any cause beyond seeing him as a means to their survival. Simcoe hoped it was meant in earnest. He needed to believe in his alliances. He needed to believe he could still be loved in ways not given by imagined necessity.

“I’m not sure,” Hewlett continued to frown. “She paid off a gambling debt of his which probably just means she had cash that she needed to make disappear. They are both opportunists -”

“No. Tarleton wouldn’t lie about that,” Simcoe considered, “neither of them would.”

The Ellie Hewlett he had known was, or presumably would be, the product of a self-fulfilling prophecy. She never entertain the idea of love, knowing one day she would be married off to a fellow noble, a pawn in a geopolitical game of chess that would never be won. She would give her lord husband a son and, having exhausted her political utility would promptly meet her end before she had the chance to become a liability. The Windsors, she told him, had learned from Diana. The Hewletts had as well. The most she could do was eradicate some of the evil of the past several centuries while she maintained the last name connecting her to them. Soon she would be a Campbell and Simcoe considered that he might well weep on her wedding day with the knowledge that he wished he shared in yet another characteristic of the most terrible, twisted man he had ever known.

For all his faults, Tarleton had at least tried his luck where he must have known he could only be negated.

Simcoe, by comparison, had not confessed his love for fear of consequences less severe. He wanted to help Mary Woodhull. Nothing, he realised, could be salvaged or saved when one feared confrontation with his own heart.

“Everything alright?” Hewlett asked.

“What does it feel like, when you fall in love with the one person you know you to be forbidden?” Simcoe posed. Hewlett, or so he distressed, was a stronger man as well. He had held every incentive to not fall in love with Anna Strong and the life he had struggled to create for himself had fallen apart the moment he had spoken three words – words, which Simcoe doubted, he would take back if given the chance.

“Can I ask why?”

“Mary told me she loved me. I don’t know her well enough to know if this was fear or pragmatism or simply a slight at the strength of my moral character – it was unnecessary and frankly inappropriate, however, it begs the question -”

“Are you stupid?” Hewlett demanded. “How did you respond?”

It occurred to Simcoe that he had never seen his comrade in arms truly riled before today though they had certainly been in fights too numerous for numbers. Perhaps it was the hour, perhaps it was the atmosphere, perhaps the words he had just spoke or the profuseness of problems that faced them outside of this new theatre, but Simcoe felt aware of the blow. He felt it like the knife that had found itself into his chest, aimed with far less force and precision than Hewlett’s present dissension. Simcoe wondered if he had had this conversation before with Mary, or with another resident of Whitehall whose surname she shared. Certainly, it seemed he had prepared for this eventuality the way that Simcoe had prepared to be confronted with Ferguson’s case files at some point.

So this was what it was to be found of guard.

“I didn’t,” he admitted sheepishly.

“I ask again,” Hewlett bit. "Are you actually an idiot?"  


  


* * *

  


Mary Woodhull had enough experience combating rejection that a phrase left unanswered ought not to have stung. For a long while she lied awake, inventing explanations, filling an absence of words with excess until she became aware of their lack of weight. Doubt had no benefit of which to speak. Mary found that she could not afford to John the same acceptance with which she had long met her husband’s evasion. Perhaps it was that their lies had become truths – an inversion of that which she had known in her marriage. Perhaps having invented an alibi together, Mary found herself unable to fabricate one independently for a loss of interest or affection. He courted conflict on her behalf yet shied from her every advance.

Mary loved a man who she paradoxically could not claim to know.

Ashamedly, she found herself reaching for her mobile as though it were reflex. She had spent six years searching Abe’s text messages for clues as to where he had really been when he came home late from Rob’s, Caleb’s or a gig at some supposed dive bar that even Google could not find. In a similar fashion, she typed John’s name into the search bar on her home screen, hoping for some indication as to who he had been before he had had her to ignore.

Nothing on the first page of results lead Mary to any particular revelation. John Graves Simcoe was extremely successful in his field; he was at one point engaged to a media heiress and entrepreneur who bore a slight resemblance to Anna, one that would perhaps be more striking if her college-and-current housemate had the benefit of a private platies instructor and a corporate Photoshop licence.

“If she wasn’t good enough for him,” Mary muttered to herself, not bothering to bring the conditional to its logical conclusion as she continued to scroll. She glazed through a number of news articles either about him in a professional capacity or in which he was quoted in the same regard. All Mary learned for her efforts was that John thought that someone called Nate Silver whose name she vaguely knew from the news was doing statistics a disservice in refusing to submit his analytical model to peer review. She imagined herself pretending to understand the criticism at the sort of dinner part where such things were discussed until wine turned the conversation back to sport. Laughing with people to whom she did not relate, lost and alone in her lover’s company. At the bottom of the screen, she tried one of the other search results prompted by the term ‘John Graves Simcoe’. ‘JG Simcoe’ brought her to a lyrics site, which brought her to view videos on loop. Two hours passed before her iPhone died. Two hours in which she heard John’s voice within Mary Robinson’s smooth, sultry contralto, the alembic of that which he chose to say so opposite to his sound.

Mary Woodhull did not know the man she had offered her heart to, but she understood him in ways she had no comparable talent in which to express. She felt his ever-failing search for place and purpose, his hidden wanting for the traits that he condemned in others. She felt lost in the paintings and postcards that had been torn from her walls, leaving only their shadows in purer shades of white that had yet to pale in the sun. She felt empty, open, lonely and lost. She did not know the man she loved, but on some level, she knew what it was to be him.

She fell asleep filling the silence left by the three words he had not said with the hundreds he claimed he never planned to offer.

“Mrs Woodhull,” someone whispered as they shook her shoulder hard enough to wake her.

“Why are we whispering?” Mary asked as she looked up to see Aberdeen. Crocking her neck slightly, she found the opposite end of the bed empty and began to weep – not for the fact that Abraham had once again abandoned her to an empty bedchamber, but because she found such relief in his absence.

“Oh, non, non!” the au pair exclaimed, before hugging her, softly singing a folk song in Hattian Creole she used to calm Thomas, stoking her hair until Mary began to hum along. “Balancé yaya Yaya o - Yaya Madan Mango balancé Yaya -Talon kikit sa se pou Yaya, that is good, Mrs Woodhull, yes, very good. Is it your leg? ‘Ave you so much pain?”

“No I … I think I am happy. I think that must be it,” Mary answered. “Have you heard anything form Abe?”

“No … but Mr ‘Ewlett says that ee saw your Jeep parked at Robert Rogers’ on his way back. I imagine ee – Mr Woodhull – is working late. Only that.”

“Work would typically denote a wage,” Mary sighed. Aberdeen looked at her with something between sorrow and expectation. “I’m glad he isn’t here. I shouldn’t be happy that things have gotten so bad between us, but I am … and that’s why I am crying. Maybe I am just tired. What time is it?”

“It is a little after midnight,” Aberdeen answered. Mary realised she could not have been sleeping very long.

“And why did you wake me up?”

“It is Peggy -”

“This sounds like something that could have waited until morning,” Mary muttered. The best argument against liberalism was hearing liberals speak. The same could be said of the opposite faction. She closed her eyes and prayed for patience if deliverance could not be granted to a sinner such as herself as Aberdeen continued frantically.

“No, it cannot! Mrs Woodhull, there is something I think I need to tell you. I should not know this, but I ‘ad the most ‘orrible of ‘eadaches when I awake and I overheard Mr ‘Ewlett and Ms Strong talking … when I …” the au pair began to sniff.

“It is okay, Aberdeen, what did they say and what, pray tell, does it have to do with Peggy Shippen?”

“Anna, euh, Ms Strong said that this Dr André, Abigail’s boss, the one I saw on Friday after he was meant to have gone to rehabilitation against alcohol abuse – I … I told you this. I told you and ‘Ewlett and all of Whitehall that I told Robert Townsend I saw him – André - with Peggy.”

“I’d … forgotten,” Mary confessed. It had been a long weekend. She found herself wishing for the left-wing rhetoric she imagined would confront her.

“What if ‘Ewlett ‘asn’t?” Aberdeen exclaimed. “What if ee is telling this to Mr Simcoe right now, or if ee has already told ‘im?”

“Is Mr Simcoe still here?”

“Yes … with Mr ‘Ewlett, it is the problem, part of the problem. Anna ‘as told Edmund in the morning that ee should ‘ave let Simcoe kill André when ee was angry enough to do it. She said that André tried to kill ‘Ewlett to make Mr Simcoe so upset as this – and I don’t want, I don’t want that anything should ‘appen!” she began weeping, uncontrolled. Mary moved to hug her, but Aberdeen declined the affection.

“Nothing is going to happen,” she tried to assure her. Aberdeen forced a folded piece of paper into her hand.

“But I found this in Peggy’s possessions when I was helping her to unpack, it is from André. You know ‘ow Mr ‘Ewlett ‘as a ‘eart condition? It is a lie! André was trying to control ‘is medication to mimic the symptoms, ee made him think all kinds of ‘orrible things that ‘is depression would worsen, that ee could monitor the effect this ‘as on Mr Simcoe – ee meant to make ‘im, Mr ‘Ewlett, commit suicide! And Peggy, she stole this too – from Abigail. She tried to explain it to me but she doesn’t know what I know so I just played dumb and let ‘er talk. She thinks she is in love with André but if ee can make this football team of his do all sorts of self-‘arming things so he can study the effects of fear on the psyche – I think so that ee manipulates Peggy as well. They sent ‘im to a mental institution –  to Belleview. Maybe it is good, if he were actually a patient, but he is only there to finish ‘is research where the police can’t get ‘im! And Peggy, she is to report to ‘im everything about ‘Ewlett and Simcoe and the others, which is why she is living ‘ere and not in Trump Tower. I don’t know what to do.”

Mary reasoned that she did however, justifying that they all did mad things for what they thought was love. 

“You were right to come to me, Aberdeen.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To round out the football analogy from the introductory notes, (the legendary) Sam Allardyce recently made a controversy-inviting comment in a post-match interview (this sort of activity, in accordance with his position as a Premiership manager in 2018, is far more of a show than Big Sam’s actual football and may perhaps be his primary role at the club.) I thought his words were worth a share in light of the chapter you just suffered:
> 
>  _"I've got no problem with the fans booing us because we deserved booing, that's what happens. We didn't play very well and the fans show their disapproval, and rightly so, because they pay money to come and watch us.”_
> 
> Well said, Sam. That sentiment pretty much encompasses the way I feel about taking up ninety or so minutes of the time for which you pay a rate to your internet provider each month. If memory serves, the Everton gaffer advised his players to take it in, let it hurt and learn from it. I’m doing my best, guys. _Hopefully_ I will be able to end this transitional arc in the next update and get us back to something I imagine you as wanting to read.
> 
> So then, on to the notes!
> 
> Geography:  
> Nothing about **Brussels** stated in this chapter was in any way exaggeratory. In fact, I may have toned it down for younger audiences. 
> 
> With a population of 4mil. **Berlin** is the largest city in Germany. One could graph the entire population in a Venn-Diagram with one circle for Vegans and the other for Politicians. The overlap is probably huge. 
> 
> **Munchkin-glad-beer** is an English approximation of **Mönchengladbach** , another city in Germany. There is a long running joke about how difficult the Scots find this word to spell and pronounce because Celtic has faced the Fohlen Elf in the CL seemingly often in recent years. 
> 
> The streets, kindergarten and kiosk in **Edinburgh** are all very much real places. That guy who sells newspapers and phone cards across from Haymarket? Never looks up from his phone. Ever. I aspire to that level of self-indulgence. 
> 
> **Melgrave** is a small town in the middle of Scotland that boasts a cleaning service and laundry mat in its single block of shops, and was chosen for that reason alone.
> 
> If you are reading The Liverpool Echo, **Toxteth** is the single worst district in all of Great Britain, which is indicative of nothing save for local bias. Manchester newspapers, as a point of comparison, all claim that the worst of the nation is within their city limits. 
> 
> Notable Persons:  
>  **Banina Georgina Tarleton** was Ban’s natural daughter, born, brought up and buried in Scotland. Her mother is listed only as **Kolina** in baptismal records. There is evidence that by-then-General Tarleton took care to visit and provide for her, which is really the least he could do, having feminised his first name in such a manner as to allow his kid go about sounding like an exotic fruit. **Marie Robinson** (sometimes Maria) is Mary Robinson’s daughter, whose early life Tarleton was also involved in. Sadly, both girls died within months of each other, decades before their sort-of-sometimes-father-figure, who had no children with his wife. 
> 
> In 2018, none of the criticism Simcoe was stated as offering up on **Nate Silver** is revolutionary, I know, but for the sake of historically accuracy, in March 2016 the FiveThirtyEight model had yet to come under serious scrutiny. Simcoe always seems to know what’s up with everyone’s b---s---, or? ;) 
> 
> Sport:  
>  **The British & Irish Lions** did a tour to South Africa in 1997. This is an event that takes place in the world of union rugby every four years. Fairly recently, I got the see them in New Zealand and would one-hundred percent recommend flying out for such a tournament (as long as you don’t have a connection through Brussels, that is.)
> 
> The **2006 FIFA World Cup** took place in Germany. No matches took place in Mönchengladbach, I just really wanted to use that joke.
> 
> In football, an **own goal** is where a player scores on their own side of the playing area rather than the one defended by the opponent. It is also a widely employed metaphor for any action that backfires...   
>  Like posting this chapter.   
> I wish I could stay we had the worst behind us, but I cut three scenes from this update in respect to length. Sorry in advance! XOXO- Tav ♥ 
> 
> Up Next: The subsequent Nuremberg trials


	37. The Demurrer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simcoe voices his doubts over Abe’s innocence in Arnold’s disappearance; Mary begins to suspect that neither man is guilty of ever having loved her. Aberdeen offers insight and assistance, not wanting to see Peggy hurt by John André in a similar fashion as that to many of her other friends and acquaintances.  
> The following morning, Tarleton pleads his case to Simcoe before confronting Washington with a troubling confession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again lovely faces! Judging from a few of the comments I received on the last chapter, I believe an apology may be in order. I presented you with the penultimate chapter of this already too-long transitional arc, alongside the assumption that all of my readers were well vested in one another’s libraries. While my belief that readers tend to comment remains unshaken (after all, don’t we as English speakers already have ‘Ulysses’ to lie to one another about having read? ;) I ought to have provided some links of better interest to my tired audience. So! Ladies and gentlemen, I have scoured the internet looking for fics that may prove more worth your while should this chapter’s summary not be to your liking. In no particular order:
> 
> For my fellow fans of twenty-first century politics, I found the definitive work:  
> [ The Impossibility, Which Makes This Possible ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4779545/chapters/10933658) \- guys I remember reading this as a teenager and I cannot believe, but am oh so pleased to discover that the David Cameron / Ed Miliband fic is still going strong! I need to catch up …
> 
> Staying in Britain, if you haven’t seen the award-winning limerick UK foreign minister (and poet laureate) Boris Johnson wrote about the sexual relations between the Turkish president and a goat, I got you:  
> [I wish I was making this up but at the same time I am so glad I’m not.](https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/boris-johnson-wins-the-spectators-president-erdogan-offensive-poetry-competition/%20)
> 
> Perhaps however, you have developed a taste for footy, crime drama and Germany? I confess, I haven’t read this one yet, but it sounds promising:  
> [ Kissed by the Devil & Saved by an Angel.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121110/chapters/9289270) Check it out!
> 
> These all may sound a bit tongue-in-cheek, I’ll admit, but I promise you I stand behind my list of better reading. None more so than with:  
> [Haywired ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745299/chapters/29069988%20) \- really, how have you not read Haywired? It is the best Simcoe / Hewlett fic out there and offers one of the most compelling character studies as seen from a modern setting in this fandom. Plus, it is _hilarious._ Wandering Ghost has a way with Simcoe’s voice that is simply unparalleled. She also has an amazing [blog](https://myturnstuff.blogspot.de/) with gorgeous TURN fan art and a work of  
> original fiction that I cannot recommend highly enough. 
> 
> In case you are here for Tallster (I can’t wait either!) [Meet Me Under The Bleachers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5828446/chapters/13432810) is my personal all-time favourite work for this pair (and not just because I am a simple girl who simply loves sport AUs.) You haven’t read it? You need to read it! Seriously, it is the freakin’ best I’ve found.
> 
> You know what the funny thing is? I found most of these searching the tags for an Arsène Wanger / Retirement fic. To my great shock and horror, none exist. (Guess which epic I’ll be writting next?)  
> But what have I written for you as of now? What, oh what, did you click on?  
> Good news is, this is the very end of the bridge, bad news is, it is still upwards of ten thousand words and … want to just do the thing?
> 
> Warnings include: right wing rhetoric, casual racism, colloquial misuse of literary terms, bitter heart break, gun control, endless monologues …and another act of the Athenian tragedy that is House Hewlett. Is it a Tarleton-heavy chapter? (And generally heavy chapter?) Ugh. Yes, but he isn’t given a POV and it is the last we will see or hear from the wayward colonel for a long, long while. I personally couldn’t be happier.
> 
> We start with Mary though, so shall we? ;)

“What precisely are you suggesting we tell him, Mrs Woodhull?” Edmund Hewlett asked.

“Anything you want,” Mary replied with a slight grin which her tenant then met. The bruise stains and shadows on Hewlett’s face bleed badly into the room’s near-blackness. His studio flat above Whitehall’s garage was dark save for the glow of a bedside reading lamp - shutters closed and thick drapes pulled over the small windows that not even the light of the stars be granted entry into their private covenant. The group spoke in whispers – that was – its members that could be bothered to speak. Mary had brought Aberdeen to Hewlett’s quarters a half an hour earlier and asked her to repeat everything she had gathered from Peggy Shippen’s desultory musings on her first brush with what the poor girl considered love. Mary’s original partner in crime had barely offered a word since their arrival.

Hearing Peggy’s situation again explained in John Graves Simcoe’s presence, Mary wondered if she did not have more reasons to empathise with the young woman who had unknowingly marked herself as an enemy. John had scarcely afforded her a greeting, sitting on the side of Hewlett’s bed as though wounded - unable or unwilling to meet the gaze of the warrior who had dealt him such a crippling blow. Was it something so terrible, Mary found herself wondering, to be loved by her? To be told as much?

Abraham had yet to come home. When Hewlett asked what she would do should he discover her here, Mary had remarked out of hand that any excuse would suffice; when they returned to their sometimes-shared bed she would pretend as though she desired her husband physically, thereby ensuring that he would not touch her or pay her any mind for the next month. Her own comments now stung like salt on open skin. Perhaps it was the same with all men. Mary had told John that she loved him and had allowed herself the comfort of letting his disability to serve as an excuse for his lack of response. Now, she was certain he had heard her, or at least read those three weighted words as they parted her lips. How, Mary cursed herself, could she possibly have been such a fool? They had scarcely known one another for a week and John had warned her as he carried her up the stairs that he left affection long unanswered – the poem he had written that had made its way into the UK Top 40 was a response (perhaps to a similar challenge) delayed by nearly a decade.

Mary glanced a framed photograph shaved to the side of Hewlett’s desk to make room for a Roman legion. Perhaps, she thought, were she as charming, pretty, witty and well-bred as the younger of the two sisters smiling in their riding gear, she would have dreary love songs written about her as well.

In six years of being married to a musician, Mary have never recognised herself in a single line of Abe’s lyrics. She closed her eyes. She would never be John’s muse, either. She was a fool to think the affection she felt for him would ever be reciprocated. He had long been in love with Anna Strong and as experience indicated her own charms could not compare. Mary suddenly wanted Simcoe as far from her as their situation allowed. Luckily, she tried to assure herself, her nature alone was enough to push men away. Mary Woodhull was not worthy of want, but she knew how to clean up a mess.

“It makes sense that Tallmadge is focusing on Whitehall as a place of interest despite, nay, due to the lack of evidence. I cleaned DeJong’s myself and taught Aberdeen to disinfect in the same fashion. She tidies up in here when you ask her to do so,” she explained to her lodger who expressed confusion in his recollection of the sergeant’s line of questioning. She sighed as she again glanced his ankle monitor. “We need to analyse all the information we have in the manner which the inspector might in order to guess his next move. Edmund, may we use your whiteboard?”

Aberdeen was already in the process of erasing long hand equations against Hewlett’s protests. Simcoe remained silent, almost disinterested. Mary had half a mind to invite him to leave.

“Why did you clean the tavern, Mrs Woodhull? Does Inspector Tallmadge know that you ‘ave done this thing?” the au pair asked with a hint of worry that had been present in her voice since Peggy’s arrival at Whitehall. Mary frowned.

“I was there on the night in question,” she answered. “Arnold, I assure you, was not. I can’t stand filth and at the time had no reason to think Anna’s bar would turn into the site of a criminal inquiry.” Only the last bit of information she provided was a lie. Aberdeen seemed not to notice. “Tallmadge doesn’t know that I ever went inside and I intend to keep it that way.”

“Ah … t-that, that might not be true,” Hewlett injected. “As it happens … I met Abraham by happenstance this afternoon at a rest stop on my way back from Albany. He sent his man Brewster to Tallmadge to uncover the truth about the affair you both claim to be having. I know that Caleb works the Tuesday evening shift, if he saw you -”

“He didn’t,” Simcoe stated plainly. “If he _had_ , there would have been no reason for him to pay Tallmadge a visit.”

“Tallmadge? Are we going to solve the Arnold case?” Aberdeen’s eyes widened in an excitement none of the rest of the party had the energy to share.

“We are going to try,” Mary told her. “Write down everything I say.”

The au pair, to Mary’s surprise, could write as quickly as one could speak. An hour later, both sides of the whiteboard, several sheets of paper and half a hundred post it notes of the four’s combined intelligence told them that Dr John André had been researching the phenomenon of fear on the human psyche for some considerable time. His project had attracted the interest of Dr Martha Dandridge, an esteemed colleague at Columbia University and a well-known and well-respected contributor to the science. She had convinced Washington (or perhaps the Secretary of Defence who shared the city’s name) to fund the project on the ground of its possible military implications. To this end, André had attempted to convince Edmund Hewlett to take his life with his own hand, speeding up the process of whatever he hoped to generate in John Graves Simcoe in time for Senator Arnold’s visit to New York.

Arnold had gone missing the day before he was scheduled to meet with André, Dandridge and their research team. The senator intended to use the study’s findings to inform his recommendations to the Defence Committee. The press reported that Arnold – who had been meant to speak at a Trump rally Tuesday evening in an attempted cover for his more controversial activity in New York - had instead arranged to meet Peggy Shippen in DeJong Tavern. The two had been engaged in an online romance for several months.

Peggy claimed to have first learned of this along with the rest of the world. She herself skipped the rally in favour of a better offer – Abigail had asked her to question André with regard to Hewlett’s intentions towards Anna. Peggy Shippen had fallen in love with the alcoholic psychologist over a plate of pierogis at an Eastern European restaurant. Having covered the cheque, her credit card statement could validate her alibi, were she only able to give one. Tallmadge was after André. Peggy had explained to Aberdeen that she could not let the police know she was in his vicinity.

“I don’t know why she was so keen to tell us though,” Aberdeen slighted. “I think it is to do with ‘er sorority sisters voting to revoke ‘er membership. She needed, maybe, girlfriends for talking too. She cannot talk to Abby because she ‘as ‘ad a most terrible breakup, and Anna, she is not ‘ere.”

“I’m not entirely convinced she isn’t playing all of us,” Mary remarked. “I don’t know André, but this feels suspiciously like his work insofar as I’ve heard of it.” It may well have been that Simcoe’s counter argument to their differing partisan politics was enough to form the basis of friendship – a display of ‘the enemy of my enemy’ logic to which Aberdeen seemed to ascribe. Mary could not help but worry, however, that her child’s caregiver had been manipulated by Peggy in the same sense they all assumed Whitehall’s newest resident to have been manipulated by André.

“I still can’t believe it was all a lie … my heart condition, this whole bloody time. But how would he -” Hewlett murmured as he examined the piece of evidence twice stolen from his own file.

“His father was a pharmacist. I think he took a look at your medical records and the list of medications that you take and came to an … unfortunately familiar conclusion,” Simcoe informed, his voice shrill, fingertips tapping an unfamiliar beat against his thigh.

“Which is?” Hewlett prodded.

“That you hadn’t suffered a stroke at all. That an attempt to poison you when you were twenty failed and this illness you were lead to believe you suffered was given as an alibi – one, that given your relations, halted any further investigation, for if it got out that half of Britain’s princesses might carry such a destructive gene -”

Hewlett scoffed and shook his head. “That sounds like the sort of rubbish the The Daily Mail -”

Simcoe’s eyes narrowed; though he continued to stare at and speak to Hewlett Mary felt their sudden arctic chill. “It is what I know Tarleton to believe. Tarleton, and the twins, and Mary Anne Burges, and Fabienne Bouchard, Danny and Charlotte Wessex, David Murphy, and … and Effie,” his voice broke. “That is why you have never read it in The Mail.”

Mary felt her jaw clench. Effie Gwillim seemed Britain’s answer to Anna Strong: a doe-eyed brunette with an Oxbridge background working far under her earning potential if only for the hubris that came from always being the best among selected company. Anna was the daughter of the district attorney, Effie’s aunt was the editor of the UK edition of Vogue – both influential and emotionally distant women had raised daughters who could easily break hearts without a care when those of girls like herself, Aberdeen, Abigail and perhaps Peggy went unheard. Mary hated her. She hated the way John softly spoke her name. She hated that he could not even hear himself for the fool that he was.

“And you are only mentioning this now?” Hewlett demanded. He positioned himself between her and Simcoe so that Mary could not see her almost-lover’s face. For a moment it seemed she was the centre of this most recent of arguments, that Hewlett, for reasons she could not fathom, was coming to her defence. Had John told his friend what she had said? Had Edmund simply guessed at it? Either way, he seemed to want to protect her from the man and his bittersweet memories of a girl he evidently considered ‘better’.

Mary Woodhull hated Effie Gwillim. Had her paper not published some bullocks relating to her injury during the morning’s soccer match, Appleton would not be in jail for the supposed crime of supporting some London club currently underperforming expectations. Had Effie’s name not been mentioned at supper, John would not be thinking of her; he would, perhaps, let Mary pretend he was hers once again. Her alibi hinged on John being able to find her desirable. Women like Effie, women like Anna, destroyed the illusion Mary needed to market and the confidence required to make the sale.

“I didn’t think there was anything to it,” Simcoe seemed to taunt. “Meeting you as an adult, seeing you for the weakling you’d become, I’d assumed -”

“Stop fighting,” Mary hissed. “Let’s stick to the facts. Tallmadge is intrigued by this angle, not because of this information,” she said as she grabbed the sheet of paper from Hewlett’s hand, “which Abigail stole from a file that the police cannot access – but because Pfizer is a joint sponsor of André’s study. The inspector’s team had a break on a case they have been building for years against the corporation the morning Arnold became the main act of the media circus. Tallmadge was removed from that investigation in response to public demand to see the senator return to safety and, by every indication, isn’t taking it particularly well. We can use that against him if we can find a way of working together.”

“What indications?” Aberdeen asked, pen and Post-It at the ready.

“His investigation should be focused in Setauket,” Mary answered. “There should be a stronger uniform presence on our streets. Arnold is here somewhere - that much Mr Hewlett and Mr Simcoe worked out mathematically – independently of one another and using, from my humble understanding, different types of equations that criminology implements. Tallmadge has likely worked this out too, but has focused his available manpower on Columbia, perhaps looking for a tie to Thomas Jefferson that would allow him to keep the man for questioning. We were able to glean as much from the files Mr Hewlett lifted from DA Smith’s computer. Rivington’s also printed an article a few days ago about the arrest and release of the lobbyist. It is the fifth search result that comes up when you google ‘DI Benjamin Tallmadge.’” Mary Woodhull spent a great deal of time skimming through search results, looking for unlisted gigs, determining where her husband was and – more decidedly – where (else) he was not. After six years of broken marriage, she considered herself something on an expert in internet sleuthing.

“So, can we be sure that Tallmadge will leave us alone?” Aberdeen squinted.

“I should doubt it, not with Bye Week serving as the test group in André’s closed study,” Hewlett answered. “It is what I am banking on if I am to be frank.” Aberdeen suddenly winced. Hewlett stopped, looked for a moment as though he meant to retract on something he had said. After short deliberation, he continued, “I have a plan to find Arnold that relies heavily on enemy cooperation which is why I’ve already told Abraham. He suspects me. He admitted as much. I told him we are going to start a door to door campaigning – a series of them. It was ah, it was Anna’s idea. Being an election year people are used to having people with clipboards knock on their doors. Espionage through social justice, you see? The plan was and is to have Mary use her UNICEF resources to figure out which streets will be most receptive to which social cause or charitable venture -”

“The problem with that is most of the residents of Setauket don’t have funds to spare,” Mary interrupted, wishing that she had been consulted sooner.

“You don’t need to open your chequebook to sign a petition of to talk to a volunteer about racial inequality or abortion rights or…” he cleared his throat. “The plan is to hit them up from every angle, compare notes on each address amongst ourselves, get the coppers to follow us – in essence, to trick them into doing the job they were assigned to do.”

“What happens if they find Arnold?” Simcoe asked.

“Then whomever is holding him hostage shall be arrested,” Hewlett stressed.

Simcoe considered this for some time before pipping, “How do you know Woodhull isn’t himself guilty?”

“Because he suspected my hand,” Hewlett sighed.

“He could have just said that, you fool! Where is he now? Why does he buy so many goddamned eggs?”

“It is nearly Easter,” Hewlett smarted, “you are still on the eggs? Why are you so obsessed with this?”

“And he often avoids my bed,” Mary spat. “There is nothing strange about my husband ignoring this particular role or responsibility.” Turning back to Hewlett, she continued. “So Abe will follow us and report what we find to Tallmadge through Caleb to ensure we are essentially working with the same set of information?”

“Precisely, my dear.”

“Good,” Mary nodded. “What else do we have?”

“Tallmadge confronted me this evening with evidence from an old crime of which I was acquitted,” Simcoe offered, though, it seemed, not to her. “Unfortunately, I cannot go into details on the matter as that was half of the agreement, but the man was so off his mark that I imagine Jefferson, or perhaps Brewster, has him distracted enough that any picture we paint for André though Peggy, as Mrs Woodhull suggests we do, will more than suffice them both. If Tallmadge is truly attempting to link his former investigation to this research, that is,” he paused. Seeming to speak alone to the ankle monitor, Simcoe added meanly, “Hewlett has been … most helpful in this venture.”

“The Paki copper -”

“She is Turkish, or Kurdish or something between the two. Can you attempt to speak without resorting to racial slurs – inaccurate though they may be?” Simcoe quipped.

“You know that is hardly what I meant,” Hewlett rubbed his temples. Mary braced herself for impact.

“You should know – ‘ow old are you? Forty? Fifty? – that your white privilege -”

“Aberdeen – you are right, but frankly this isn’t helpful,” Mary said sharply whilst her au pair scribbled a Hitler moustache on the stick figure she had labelled as ‘Hewlett’. Simcoe laughed.

“I’m … thirty-five,” Hewlett murmured, brushing back a few stands of hair that had skipped grey on their way to white in the last few weeks. “The Detective Sergeant – um, Yildiz isn’t her name but I forget what she corrected it to. At any rate, the woman who by whom I was interrogated said that Simcoe’s costuming me in an old Everton jersey during Akinbode’s breakup bash lead her to believe - amongst a series of other purely circumstantial evidence she located – that I, well. That I was trying to pin this crime, that is, the disappearance, on a man named Banastre Tarleton who served under Arnold and is currently working at the British Embassy in Washington. Tarleton has placed a block on my medical records which I tried to secure for Tallmadge from our new ambassador in exchange for John’s release -”

“I’ll text him at a more Christian hour,” Simcoe shrugged. “Tarleton will talk. He can’t help it.”

“Are you sure?” Mary challenged. “I mean - are you sure that is wise? Your embassy? This investigation is already destroying our town, the last thing we need is for it to become an international incident.”

“Arnold is a senator whose controversial bill is about to pass simply on the grounds that he is not around to defend it. I’m a prince of the blood who is about to marry an American divorcée without the permission of my Queen. I’m also the chief suspect in this case. This is already and international incident,” Hewlett muttered.

“Mr Simcoe is right about Tarleton,” Aberdeen cleared her throat. “Ee thinks ‘imself clever and thinks ‘is talents fully underappreciated. If ee knows anything about ‘ow the case looks from the perspective of The Pentagon or its foreign allies, ee will tell Mr Simcoe to convince ‘im of what a darling ee is.”

“How, pray tell, are the two of you acquainted?” Hewlett squinted, shaking his head slightly.

“We aren’t. But Mary Robinson wrote two whole albums about ‘im and when I was learning English I wrote down the lyrics to songs as I listened. It is why I am so quick at transcribing,” Aberdeen smiled. “I think Tay Tay wrote -”

“She is right,” Simcoe stated. “He’ll talk. If he has access to Hewlett’s records – records he knows Tallmadge to want – he will be keen to let me know why he has put a hold on them.”

“He hates you,” Hewlett contravened.

“You want to try your luck, then?” Simcoe spat. “Why not ring up your sister and let her know that not only did you confess to a crime Ferguson is now looking to the rest of your siblings to answer for as they now have a hand in daily business operations, but that you singlehandedly deflected some of Tallmadge’s suspicion onto a man I well suspect she fancies?”

“I don’t even have a working number for Eleanor.”

“As it happens … I do,” Mary inserted. “At work. We are in the same field. Depending on what Tarleton tells John, I’ll examine that angle.”

“So it is decided then? We are going to pin this whole thing on a kid we both grew up with? Because we don’t agree with his politics or simply because it is convenient? I always knew you were cruel, Edmund, but -”

“No one is pinning any crimes,” Hewlett insisted. “No one is ringing any member of my family. We are just … using Ban for insight and as a possible means of exploiting some to Tallmadge’s time and resources whilst we work out the kinks in our plan to locate Arnold. We know from the evidence that you and Mary found on your ‘date’ that he left the basement storage room of DeJong’s by foot, perhaps with a broken leg, and was picked up on the side of the road by a white vehicle that swerved into a tree to avoid him. It is probably dented but not too heavily damaged, and could not have gotten out of this town without being searched. That is what we need to be on the lookout for. What Tallmadge should be looking for … but if he plans to bring André to justice in the meantime or instead, well …”

“Robert Rogers ‘as a white work truck,” Aberdeen said excitedly. “And ee is a good mate of Dr André.”

“And he didn’t drive to the match yesterday,” Simcoe smiled, “instead relying on … Woodhull for transportation. Oh, fancy that.”

“My husband had nothing to do with this! This – this is just what my marriage is like,” Mary pleaded. How very dare John ruin her only make threats at what little she had left. “If you mean to ‘help me’ as you’ve said -”

“I’m surprised ee went as far as to send Caleb to spy on Tallmadge,” Aberdeen muttered her agreeance. Mary stopped, as did the world.

“So … so am I,” she said quietly after some consideration.

“I’ll drive by, see what I can find out,” Simcoe announced as he moved to exit. “Hewlett … come round to mine after work tomorrow ... or today, rather,” he corrected, looking at the time on his phone. “Miss Declesias, Mrs Woodhull, I’ll see you both on Tuesday. I’ll be in Setauket to coach the kid’s team -”

Aberdeen began dictating and writing herself another note. “Which includes ADA Aaron Burr’s daughter and ADIC Alexander ‘Amilton’s son. Both are assigned to the Arnold case, neither would let their children play for Mr Simcoe if ee was truly a person of interest,” she smiled. Mary gave her a curious look. How long had this interrogation with Townsend and his associates lasted? “I’m just repeating what Anna said this morning to Mr Hewlett,” Aberdeen shrugged. Hewlett nodded.

“That is why she asked me to be caretaker manger?” Simcoe asked, disheartened and slightly offended.

“Well I should doubt Anna asked you in so that you might teach her team how to properly foul the opposition,” Hewlett quipped. Unable to instantly formulate some sarcastic reply or another, Simcoe then left without a word.

“Aberdeen,” Mary said, swallowing a sob at seeing the back of another lover turned without paying her any further regard. “Find out in the next few days everything you can about André’s research. Visit him at Belleview with Peggy if need be -”

“No, I’m sorry I cannot allow -” Hewlett began.

“She will be safe. There is nothing that André can do to her in a heavily guarded facility. Find out – if you can - what André expects his research to show and report to Mr Hewlett and Mr Simcoe that they might behave in such a way around Peggy that we cause André to question his calculations. We will force him to ruin himself. No one need die for vengeance to be ensured.”

“I agree,” Hewlett said quietly after a moment. “Still I don’t want to risk Aberdeen’s safety, she is just a kid herself -”

“What of what I want, Mr ‘Ewlett?” the au pair demanded. “I don’t want Peggy to be ‘urt by this man. I don’t want that anyone else should be and ee ‘as tried to ‘urt you and Mr Simcoe – and the nice men of your football team. I don’t like Setauket, but I don’t think the people ‘ere are undeserving of justice. Ee cannot get away with this. Ee won’t! You and I could easily be deported, and ee, who ‘as made such a worse crime as simply wanting to live ‘ere, who plans to attack the US Armed Forces with the same mind-poison ee did you, should be lauded as a genius? As a romantic ‘ero? I’ll not ‘ave it! Someone needs to stand up for you and I am good at taking stands! We are fellow immigrants, but we are also friends, are we not, Mr ‘Ewlett?”

Hewlett let himself smile for a moment. “I … I suppose we are friends, Aberdeen, which is why I worry.”

“If you can trust me to spy on Agent Lafayette, Dr André and Peggy should prove -”

Mary shot her lodger a sharp glare before addressing her au pair. “Aberdeen, excuse me – you did _what_ at Mr Hewlett’s request?”

 

* * *

 

At two in the morning, a light was on in Robert Rogers’ halfway house. Simcoe had parked a block away before sneaking to the window to hazard a look. Bye Week’s keeper was still up, holding a conference with his tenant Robeson, Robeson’s boyfriend Joyce, and (of all people Simcoe had not expected to find seated at the kitchen table talking over Chinese takeaway) local weed farmer Lewis Brewster. He watched for a while, waiting for Woodhull to grace the late-night meeting of MSG and THC, but to no avail. It looked after some time as though Rogers was doing his best to offer couples’ counselling, that Brewster was better suited to the task. Simcoe wondered what had transpired between the lovers, remembering that in all of the morning’s chaos Robeson had not been present on the pitch.

Perhaps he had it wrong.

No, there was something more going on here.

Mary Woodhull’s Jeep was parked in front of the locked garage though there was no trace of her husband. Simcoe spent an hour searching the vicinity - ultimately finding nothing save for his own defeat. Sullenly, he returned to Manhattan, suspicions unsatisfied and simultaneously unwavering. There was something wrong with the sort of man who would not rush home to be at his wife’s side.

He knew as much from the example he himself set.

He did not deserve Mary Woodhull, the taste of her cherry flavoured lip-gloss of the marks left by her teeth on his malfunctioning ear. He did not deserve her love. The only reason she was in this situation - the only reason she had become a casualty of it - was his sudden presence in her life. She had been happy before him. She would be happy without him. She would see as much when the morphine fully wore off.

John Graves Simcoe spent the whole of the night in the company of these thoughts. They found him in his sleep, in the shadows on his walls, in his sheets still covered with the scent of Hewlett’s blood, sweat and sex. They found him in the distractions he sought on his phone – on the stock ticker, in old photographs, in any news item he tried to skim with eyes barely open. He could not save the woman he loved. He tasted her lip-gloss and felt her hands around his throat. Mary Woodhull could and would save herself. She might yet save them all. He did not deserve her grace.

When the clock struck six, he absentmindedly hit send on a simple message he had first composed in before leaving Whitehall. >> _When you wake up, please text me. There is an urgent matter we need to discuss._ <<

Simcoe had not expected his mobile to ring moments later. Hitting ignore on the call, he typed out a request to reduce communication to written form. He was having trouble with his ears. It took twelve minutes before he received a reply that read >> _We are well suited to never speak, you and I. Can you still read lips? Can we Skype?_ <<  

Ban Tarleton, he remembered, had lost most of his right hand in combat. Simcoe found himself smiling at the realisation. Perhaps, he considered for the first time, the reason his oldest friend hardly wrote owed itself to inability. The idea was more comforting than it ought to have been. The idea was comforting until Simcoe considered the implication; he sometimes missed the company and conversation of a man who had committed greater atrocities than would even enter into his own contemplation, yet it was he who was positioning to condemn Tarleton for the sake of convenience. When exactly, he wondered, had both their lives taken such dark turns?

Not wanting to strain his eyes with the mobile version of the video call service, Simcoe switched on his computer, making himself a cup of tea while he waited for the machine to start up. Tarleton, he saw a five minutes later, had taken no time to relax. He looked horrible – dark rings framing bloodshot eyes as though he had been in an all-night brawl with sleep and taken more than his share of punches in a battle he would doubtlessly claim to have won if asked. Simcoe recalled having long ago convinced the then-captain of their school’s football team to give the imp a spot on the squad after Tarleton had first been introduced to coffee, thinking –correctly – that running every evening would wear him out enough that the impulse to plague the night with his mindless musings would prove less tempting. He had agreed to join the team himself to this end - that had been the deal with Danny Wessex who wanted to sign him and him alone. Two years later, Tarleton was promoted to the captaincy after a close race, something that, even twelve years after the fact Simcoe maintained was unfair. He was a better leader. He had slight seniority in the team. He had told Tarleton as much, informing that the only reason he was even on the roster was due to a sacrifice Simcoe had made in service of his want for sleep, which seemed to injure his dorm mate’s ego enough.

Were only their problems and the solutions they sought as simple as they had seemed at sixteen, he sighed to himself.

Banastre Tarleton did not look beaten, Simcoe then decided. He looked like he was engaged in a fighting retreat, smiling as though his caller would soon find himself under heavy fire.

“Yea, sorry mate, I can’t keep up with you in that respect,” the colonel greeted with deceptive merriment, shaking his left hand free of the words he did not wish to type. “My hand is ready to give up on me entirely from explaining to Marie – oi, do you remember, that German writer – poet, dramatist - whatever? The bloody genius you told me about back at school?”

Simcoe considered for a moment the all of the occasions he had attempted to tutor Tarleton against what he assessed the man’s appreciation for literature to be. >> _Bertolt Brecht?_ << he guessed. No written narrative that he could remember from their curriculum had ever much spoken to the man’s soul. >> _Did you by chance relay the story of how he got his teachers to alter his grades by marking spelling and grammar mistakes that were not present and then questioning where he was wrong?_ <<  he asked, laughing a little internally over how very much Tarleton might come to resent his hero could he be bothered to emerge himself in the scathing social critique of a clever Marxist. There was no point in trying to explain irony. His former dorm-mate’s interest in the written word had never extend much beyond the notes Simcoe had let him copy in hopes of being left to read in peace in their long shared room.

“Yea,” Tarleton admitted, “only it took me about half an hour to type as much. Hope it worked out in time. She is in a fight with her mum, you see, and it is my fault in a roundabout way. I imagine things will only get worse at home if Mary has to sign an exam.”

>> _What did you do?_ << Simcoe asked for his better manners demanded it.

“Left Mou to their care. Marie did not want to walk him exactly when her mum wanted her to and she is at an age now where everything explodes at even the hint of a spark.”

>> _I take it things are otherwise going well then?_ <<

“Nope, no,” Tarleton smiled, perhaps to keep from screaming. Though he could not hear him at present, he imagined his former friend’s tone to remain as breezy and buoyant as it had always been. “Mary and I … we got into yet another row about how the kids are being raised last August. Then September happened and then October, and now I’m single,  living in a studio in East Toxteth, listening to Taylor on loop – which is its own kind of irony, given that literally everyone I ever knew sided with Mary in the break up.”

Simcoe took a deep breath, fighting every urge to once again inform Tarleton that ‘irony’ was a literary deice used to indicate intention opposite to that which is ostentatiously stated, as opposed to ‘a mild inconvenience’ as he still seemed to believe. Realising that it would be a waste of time, that it did not serve his interests to argue with an idiot, he tried to appeal to him instead. >> _Yea. I know what that is like. Check Twitter though? You still have Effie._ << he wrote, adding when he saw his former friend’s face fall into a rare frown, >> _You can count me, too, if you feel that might balance things._ <<

“You know that is all fake, right? Twitter … Edmund texted Effie to do something about your having gotten arrested, she wrote me to ask if it was … advisable, given, I suppose, what happened last Wednesday.” Simcoe suddenly felt himself fully awake, barely having touched his tea. Tarleton and Hewlett had both played roles in trying to ensure his release. Given circumstance, it seemed rather ironic. There would be no strategic gain in pointing this out and it might well serve against him. Tarleton’s subtleties, he well knew, were far more difficult to read than those found in any piece of fiction. 

“I gave permission to proceed and then when a protest broke out, Effie started a ‘war’ with my ex on social media to distract from the fact that The Daily Mail was the first to print the story that saw you freed, not wanting to herself become a suspect. She did pen and print the first article on the crime scene, after all,” the colonel continued. “The two aren’t really fighting. They were probably sitting on the couch together when it happened; catching up on ‘The Only Way is Essex’, ‘Made in Chelsea’ or whatever other scripted reality drama is airing. Effie, I’m well sure, brought Middle Eastern regimes into the discussion because she felt bad about her guilty pleasures being as pedestrian as they are. Nothing’s really changed since you left, you see.”

>> _Everything has._ <<

“Yea … I, I know.”

>> _You look terrible,_ << Simcoe told him. This, however, was only half-true. The once proud, pretentious pretty-boy looked completely human, which was at once both tragic and terrifying. Somehow, he had expected the elegant devil to don a dress uniform, to be freshly shaven with his dark hair slicked back, to be speaking of war gains rather than of personal losses. He expected a version of Edmund Hewlett, of any Hewlett, albeit one who would ironically name himself as their natural opposition.

He well looked the part now. Dressed in a tee shirt (and presumably boxers), morning stubble and messy curls, Tarleton seemed no better off than he himself. It struck Simcoe how much this appealed to his sympathises, even with the hard won knowledge that the man’s single strength was his ability to make himself seem personable to any company. This, too, was likely a clever ploy of calculation. Tarleton seemed like an average person. A reasonable one. One that might be reasoned with. He looked like a person because he was likely aware that Simcoe knew how to fight and slay monsters.

“I’ve been awake for … time, loads of it. I’m not sure how or if hours actually work here. But you!” he broke out into laughter, “Fuck, mate – when you said you were having problems with your ears I’d imagined you meant that your hearing problems had returned. What is going on,” the colonel gestured to the side of his own head with his good hand. “What is this?”

>> _A long story_. << Simcoe replied of the bandage he still wore. He could feel the warm of Mary’s lips, the warm of the world between her legs, the chill that traversed his spine when she spoke to him of love.

“Ah, come now – I’m a fast talker, you’re quick at typing, fill me in - it has been bloody ages, hasn’t it?”

Perhaps it was the familiarity with which he was addressed, or the idea that at least part of the reason they had not spoken in recent years was that they could not rather than there being some unspeakable sin between them. Tarleton did not seem like a heartless killer, he seemed like the boy who had broken him out of his shell through sheer persistence; that was until Simcoe realised that in many ways he seemed like he had simply given up, that his attitude and appearance was more surrender than strategy.

>> _You are unusually quite_. << Simcoe commented when he had finished relaying his romantic troubles without having been interrupted. It was eerie. Disquieting.

“I’m just in shock. Sounds like you are trying to steal my life mate. Let me understand this right, you’ve this completely infatuating married woman with a small child who, somehow, by God’s grace, thinks your interesting enough to have around – that, or, the everywhere-but-the-bedroom sex is worth her while. She is incredibly successful in her given field whereby her husband is a looser in his, but she is never going to leave him because of his parents, or hers, or something. She gets on better than you do with most of your friends and you have a sinking feeling that she doesn’t mean it when she says that she loves you. And her name is Mary. Parallel fucking lives.”

He was more accurate than he realised. Simcoe still had not told him the reason for his call.

>> _Bit more complicated than that. She is my alibi for the night Benedict Arnold went missing._ <<

“Well, then you're fucked one way or another,” Tarleton smiled. He shifted. “You and me both ... John, we really need to talk. I don’t think there is an easy way for me to say this … but I’ve – I came here in service to the Sovereign to advise Senator Arnold in marketing his defence bill, which … seems to be an easier sell without the man himself around. Without meetings to otherwise occupy me, I’ve taken to reading the damned thing.”

Simcoe wondered if incompetence was a stated government objective. He nodded for Tarleton to continue.

“There were some documents that I am aware Edmund requested for his defence, or for yours, which … for selfish reasons I convinced Cornwallis to deny Inspector Tallmadge and his search. I’ve since sent them in full to Effie Gwillim, but she has yet to respond on how we ought best proceed. How … how acquainted are you, exactly, with a Dr John André?” he squinted.

>> _He was my therapist for years after I was ordered by a court to seek out anger management._ <<

“And Hewlett?”

>> _Went on his own accord._ <<

“Hm.”

Tarleton was so still Simcoe thought the connection had given out. >> _You are a suspect in the investigation as well._ << he wrote.

“How is that?”

Simcoe swallowed. He typed. >> _I found Hewlett with Anna in my bed. I’d beaten him up for unrelated reasons and as his bloodied cloths were in my machine. I lent him your old Rooney jersey when another mate of ours came by - for no other reason than I knew he would hate wearing it. We went to a Walmart shooting range and the next morning the police did a raid on Hewlett’s flat, taking the item presumably form his rubbish or laundry bin. Being that you gave evidence at another investigation against us, or rather, against Ellie, you became a person of interest. The police then found that you served under Arnold in the operation that crippled you and think this might all be part of some elaborate revenge scheme._ << Closing his eyes, he wrote, >> _The records you are keeping from Tallmadge likely don’t help you case._ <<

Tarleton shook his head. “Its just mad isn’t it? You can’t smoke anywhere in the states but you can fire a gun in a designated area in a fucking supermarket and it is not considered a danger to public health and safety.”

>> _That is your take away?_ << Simcoe dismayed, wondering if Tarleton had skimmed his texts without any effort to internalise them in the way he had always been given to consuming prose, plays and poetry.

“Can I get the jersey back, do you think?” he puzzled for a moment. Simcoe did not bother to respond. “O’rite. I guess that is sorted then. I’ll be honest with you, John, I’ve long resented you – hated you even since that day we had in hospital last year.”

>> _What happened?_ << Simcoe typed quickly as he could.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Tarleton smarted in retort.

>> _I don’t remember._ << Simcoe confessed.

“I figured,” Tarleton said before pausing for another long while, pressing his lips together and looking away from the camera. “Do you still use the same email?”

>> _Yes_. <<

“I’m going to send you something. Let you redeem yourself, if you wish. It is John André’s original research proposal, methods he has been testing on you and your mates for years and intends to employ within the ranks. I know you don’t think much of my ethics but I cannot allow that to happen. I simply cannot. I was up half the night, thinking about what would happen had I – with my extensive training - blacked out in rage in the moments of my own life where I had been nearly paralysed with the kind of fear André suggests can be eliminated from the field. But I’ve seen it, haven’t I? I have seen it in you. And you have, too.”

>> _I don’t remember anything about that day!_ << Simcoe insisted.

Tarleton shook his head lightly. “Edmund stabbed you? _Edmund?_ Oh bloody hell…”

He was right. Edmund Hewlett was naturally inclined to avoid conflict when the situation demanded it than to react violently in a bout of anger over nothing. A few days ago, he had been ready to kill. Simcoe cursed himself, wondering if he had recognised this earlier if everything that had since transpired could have been avoided.

His phone lit up with an alert. He could not believe sabres were being surrendered rather than rattled.

“Right so, there you have it. Do whatever you will with it, give it to Tallmadge, ring your local representative, your solicitor, delete it ... if you want, but first I need something in exchange.”

>> _First tell me what happened in hospital._ <<

“You’ll see I also attached Edmund Hewlett’s medical records,” Tarleton continued, ignoring his request. “And those of Thomas Gwillim. Gene was right. Back when we were kids, he was right and … a few months ago I _did_ something about it, intending that if the crime was investigated instead of merely covered up, Lady Edith would go down for mine if she cannot be brought to justice all of her many. It won’t happen now,” he sighed. “Not with my being a suspect in this case, thanks, I guess, to you. Not with the files every intelligence agency on the planet knows that I’ve seen. I’m not sorry. Not in the least. I wish I’d known and acted sooner. Done more. _You could have_ ,” he seemed to stress, “But it makes no difference now. I need you to give my closing argument in the event that I, well, end up answering for what I well imagine to be your crimes in the interim.”

>> _You don’t mean to say that you think I had something to do with Senator Arnold?_ <<

Banastre Tarleton did not answer if he even read the question.

John Graves Simcoe could taste his own sick.

He returned to the day Eugene Hewlett had come back to boarding school after a weekend trip home to visit his bed-ridden brother, convinced that Edmund had been poisoned. No one took him seriously, save for his sister, who, after silencing the spectacle, confided to Tarleton that she had evidence that what her twin had said could well be true. Effie Gwillim’s father, she had told him, had suffered the same fate years earlier, dying of stroke at a young age. The then owner and editor of Britain’s most popular newspaper had evidently discovered something horrible about the Hewletts. They had paid him off, he had pressed for more, and Lady Edith, who had left higher education a semester shy of a degree in biochemistry, had demonstrated how willing she was to negotiate further. Or so Eleanor Hewlett had laid it out, Eugene adding only that they extended the same hospitality to members of their own house when threatened - an argument, Simcoe had noted at the time, that medieval and early modern history supported.

Banastre Tarleton had never needed much convincing.

John Graves Simcoe, even after seeing evidence earlier in the evening that his beloved enemy’s symptoms were indeed manufactured, was still unsure.

His former friend need not continue. He knew what Tarleton was capable of; he did not want fantasies of the righteousness of it all forced upon him. In the past week, Simcoe had endured too much to believe in the fallacies of good and evil. The only truth was survival. He listened, if only to avoid another obstacle to that end.

“I’m something of a public figure because of the force my father was in politics,” Tarleton continued, perhaps to address Simcoe’s scepticism, perhaps to brag or beg mercy. “I’ve been told by that I turn his legacy into shame every time I speak in public. I hate that. I hate the insinuation that my politics have anything to do with those of my father. I came from a good home, a proper one in every sense. But I grew up with too many children who didn’t have parents, and that just doesn’t sit right with me.”

To Simcoe, it sounded like stale, sordid rhetoric.

“You’ll fault me for being simplistic in my justifications, for imposing the effects of the specific example I am using on an entire population, and to that charge I offer that if this behaviour were singular, we as a society would not allow it. Allow? No. We blatantly encourage it nowadays. The duke, his erstwhile lady and the man she eventually married imprisoned, raped, murdered and mangled their own children with the stated objective of helping minorities – and on top of it, on top of it  - they waste no opportunity to give their charges cause to feel guilty and ashamed about their so-said privilege. It’s allegorical to what our culture has become. Where I live, in Liverpool, in the city in which I was born and raised, my own daughters can’t visit me. Poverty and crime are both rampant, public services won’t respond to destress calls – and why? Because that would be ‘racist’,” Tarleton began to rant. “Because some liberal bastard in Westminster is lining his pockets with the sort of human trafficking that creates this influx of foreigners who we are meant to pity and cater to. Politicians don’t even bother to express horror anymore when these people fail to respect the laws we are unwilling to inforce because of some misguided notion of ‘understanding’, or ‘cultural relativity’, or whatever politically correct language we’ve agreed upon to halt any honest conversation from happening. ”

With these words, Simcoe returned to the night he invited Arnold to take their disagreement out into the car park. He had only just met the man. The only thing they had been able to agree on was that though rejection hurt, love was far more painful. He did not know who Arnold was, who he may once have been. He did not know how his opinions had come to form or how he had managed to convince anyone to share his views with rhetoric that boarder on outright hate speech. Simcoe had known Tarleton, however, since they both had been boys. Thinking about what Ban had become as an adult forced him consider Arnold as a person beyond his protectionist politics. There were likely sides to the senator which the world would never know, deep-rooted morals and sensitivities born out in the worst ways. Neither Ban nor Benedict had returned from war; neither had been given a chance to truly do so. He saw Tarleton but imagined Arnold’s deeper, far more authoritative voice. There was no good. There was no evil. There was only survival and he had robbed Arnold of all semblance of that abstract he had assembled. He had assaulted him without reason. He had not paid him much personal consideration after the fact.

Reason, Simcoe thought, had long been his substitute for all that which he personally lacked. He felt ill at the ease at which he had surrendered it to André’s random whims.

“I’m on the wrong side of history for supporting immigration reform, or so I’m told, as though people alive today have to ability to judge what cultural norms will be in seventy years. The way you look at me now tells me that I should count you among my critics. And I’ve tried, truly, I’ve been trying for years to understand how you can adapt such an attitude. You act as though policy couldn’t interest you less, as though politics was a game played by those with too much time and not enough talent to pursue more worthy interests, you act like what happens in the motherland doesn’t effect you in your shiny new world, but fuck mate! You’re in banking, you should know better than most where your taxes are going and where they are decidedly not. You remember Kolina? She was sentenced to one hundred hours community service for petty theft, the process around a pair of £3 sunglasses with the plaintiff offering a guilty plea cost the city over a thousand quid – the half of which she has to pay back. Added to this incompetence, on the same day, a few blocks from the Edinburgh Primark, in a flat paid for by the government, a Syrian refugee killed his wife – stabbed her to death in their kitchen. That didn’t go to court. According to the public prosecutor, he had not lived in Britain long enough to understand our laws in a way to be held accountable to them. I found out about it on the online editions of a few newspapers, but with censors worried that race riots would start if such was put to ink …” he swallowed. “My daughter’s mother has a criminal record, a sentence and an astronomical fine when judged against actual damages, while a murdered becomes a victim, and we actually have laws in place about pointing this out to the wider public.”

Reason had never played much of a role in any of Tarleton’s dealings. He acted before looking for justification. Simcoe would be damned if he continued to mirror the same behaviour which he was beginning to identify in himself of late.

>> _Ban, is your expectation that I should compose your hate speech into elegant rhetoric? I understand the outrage though I fail to sympathise with it, but I don’t understand what –if indeed anything- this has to do with André’s study or Hewlett’s medical record._ <<

“Read it then. And read Eddie’s record in comparison to Effie’s father’s autopsy. Shit, you don’t even have to do any research, you were there. You remember the shootout at the safe house that you let define you. How Edmund was so enraged that his father had forbade him from reporting the incident – from reporting you missing – that he later tried to file charges against the man on your behalf. That is why your godfather came back from deployment, to help him get the legal backing. But then Eddie had a stroke, at what, twenty? Look at everything else that was happening at that time, the influx of asylum seekers, the crackdown on low-budget narcoleptics to the north of Hadrian’s Wall that lead to the widespread use of heroin – suddenly, suspiciously easy to access. Of course, thanks to the duke’s pseudo-liberal political influence, sentencing for drug offenders was softened, made practically non-existent for those holding or awaiting asylum. The Hewletts got bloody rich off trafficking and sold it to the public as ‘tolerance’. The worst of it is that they forced all of their still-innocent children to believe the propaganda. I can’t bloody think of a more exacting example for the argument that Gutmenschen are indeed the worst people. Edmund, who was enlightened to all of this around the same time as you were, threatened his father’s bottom line and his mother attempted to kill him for it, same as she did Effie’s dad decades before. She sat at his fucking bedside like a woman grieving for a sick child, whispering to him when he could not respond, when no one knew how much brain function he still had, that he was a terrible person for wanting to hurt the people that his position in society demanded that he help. And while in hindsight we can see what a bloody waste it was on Edmund’s part to offer anything in your defence, I feel like … like it didn’t even occur to Lady Edith that that was her _son_ lying there - that he had only been trying to help an innocent orphan by retracting a formal complaint he had been forced to make before you had any legal rights of your own to exercise.”

>> _I never knew any of this. Edmund never told me_. <<

Tarleton looked away for a moment. Simcoe’s inbox lit up again.

“How many of us speak freely of our defeats? Oh – are you disappointed John, sad that Eddie isn’t the villain you need him to be so you can live with yourself? Apropos, that is why I imagine you said nothing of the hell to which he has been subject to here in the colonies. His depression. His stabbing you, according to a statement you gave on Wednesday. Really, John? Edmund Hewlett, Saint Edmund handle a weapon? Did you really need to personally be at the centre of this fiasco to recognise that something was seriously wrong with a man you claim is your _friend_? You were enjoying it … I bet. Vindication. This idea that only you carry that he is just as much of a bastard as you are. I can’t forgive you for what you did to Effie … I can understand it within the context of your being a subject in André’s study and could likely excuse it as a symptom of this were it not for what you said to Ellie a decade earlier. What the fuck kind of a man gets told by a friend that she hasn’t spoken to her father since well before starting school because when she told him her uncle had sexually mishandled her, he responded that he knew already, that it was the trade he made for permission to build some windfarm off the coast, that it was the price she had to pay for her pretty dresses? Seriously, who the fuck hears that and answers: ‘ _Oh, your brother is a terrible person too. He took me to negotiate the terms of a trafficking agreement when I was eleven, and by the way, the only reason your house is quite so rich and powerful is because you bring loads of opioids into Britain._ ’

“You have no soul, none! And I hope to God that every time you take a woman to bed it is in the back of your mind that the only reason she is there is that she knows you have no interest in spending the night. That she wants something empty with someone who thinks she is nothing because otherwise she can’t bear human touch and she worries that is somehow worse than whatever it is that you offer. Yea, that is it, isn’t it? So tell me more about this Mary of yours.”

“You have no right,” Simcoe spoke. “Ban, I am warning you -”

“What? What can you possibly do to me now? Pin me with the murder of the man who saved my life? In a few hours, I am going to argue before Congress that they cannot pass this bill of his as it is currently written, that André’s methods are extremely dangerous to a civilian population and - immediately afterwards, I imagine, I’ll be dishonourably discharged and sent home through _Brussels._ ”

He could be so hyperbolic, Simcoe tried to tell himself. That is all this was.

“Maybe I’ll be lucky,” Tarleton shrugged with one shoulder. “Maybe Tallmadge truly does consider me to be guilty and I’ll somehow get stuck here, to answer for your crime rather than risk being in the vicinity of mine. I’m going down either way. I have nothing to go back to, and I hate to admit it, but you’re smarter than me, John. You always have been. In exchange for the information I sent, for the fact that when Tallmadge asks me about you I’ll only tell stories about how you were quiet and kind, spent more time in the company of books, wrote poetry - whatever it is you use to market yourself on dating websites - there is something I want in return. I’ll do my best to convince whoever needs convincing of your innocence, and you’ll make sure, in some discreet way, that Lady Edith suffers as much as her once-lover in the likely event of his passing. Hopefully, you can figure out how to do so in a way that doesn’t turn all of Liverpool into Toxteth. I sure as all fuck can’t.”

Banastre Tarleton continued to speak. All Simcoe heard was that he had killed the kingdom’s largest landowner.

“You know Edith had Edna when she was only fourteen right? Fourteen,” he shook his head. “That is a child. That would be like if Marie were pregnant now. Of course Edward wouldn’t look at her after that. No. Being old enough to bare children immediately removed her from the sphere of his sexual interests. They sent her away, for two years until Edith was granted permission from the Sovereign to marry a younger brother instead. This little baby Edna, locked in some tower in the far north, her existence, and eventually her inheritance denied. Little wonder she grew up to be so cold. And Ellie! Who looked so much like her mother when she was little; suffering from her uncle's advances in an exchange her father agreed to that some law be passed with his profit portfolio in mind. You know how pretty I always thought her, now that the world agrees it is like you can’t even see her face anymore. When she smiles it is always …” he paused, perhaps to mimic. “But Gene, to my mind had the worst of it - ruined completely, can only eat a few bites a day without coughing up blood, still on supplements because he is terrified of what his parents would do if he was ever unpresentable in their eyes. They have him in hospital now; being arrested and abused by the FBI was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. Edmund escaped, albeit only a decade after his mother literally tried to murder him just to save face. But now he is a suspect in this Arnold thing, because of _you_ …”

There were so many times life had afforded Simcoe the opportunity to intervene on behalf of the Hewlett siblings; so many chances to rise to a challenge which he had answered by closing his eyes in favour of rest, acting as though the battle horn did not sound for him, as though he could not hear its cry. Things ought never to have gotten to the point where Tarleton was in the business of killing influential figureheads in the hopes that his crime might expose others. Things should never have been allowed to get where they were between himself and his former dorm mate personally. Simcoe thought all the times that he could have been there for the people he had once been able to call friends yet was not, justifying his inaction with some moral superiority complex. He thought about Ellie sobbing in the toilets, how he was so hurt that she used him in the same way he used her that he did not really even consider the basis of her reasons for telling him that she had only fucked him because she knew he did not fancy her. That she could not stand being the object of anyone’s affection. She told him explicitly. He had not heard her. He had not listened. He thought about Mary screaming her husband’s name during sex. Ban was right. Most of the sex he had been subject to as an adult had left him cold.

He agreed to helping Tarleton save his city from the stain of his crime and turned off his computer when Mary’s remembered screams –present in every word that was spoken - became too much a burden for him to bear.

At seven in the morning, an hour before he was due at the office, John Grave Simcoe returned to his sheets, returned to the bed he had nearly buried Edmund Hewlett in and screamed into a pillow that carried his stench. He screamed. He screamed for Hewlett. For Arnold. For André. For Anna. For Aberdeen. For every bloke on his Sunday league side. For Ban and whatever ill-advised thing he was about to do.

Mostly, he screamed for Mary. He screamed until he could almost hear himself over the deafening memories of her crying for her husband when he had her bent over her desk, over her crying in pain when her anklet had been shattered, over the cries of the sirens that carried him from her for the crime of coming to her defence.

 

* * *

 

He had invited this pain, courted it even with honey words and flowing whiskey. It did not fail Charles Cornwallis’ expectations to find himself with a pounding headache on Monday morning, but he had been deceived by it all the same. This was not the sort of hangover that announced itself with the alarm. The ambassador had showered, breakfasted and climbed into the back of a vehicle before discomfort began to disconcert. He had not thought on aspirin or fatty meats until it was too late for either to bring him any comfort. He was five miles outside of the capitol before he truly felt his own sick.

The silence should have come as more of a relief than it did. Gazing out of the car’s window with small eyes and a look of dejection, Tarleton seemed as volatile as when he laughingly exhibited cruelty. At least when he smiled, Cornwallis knew what to expect. Perhaps his attaché was singing the same internal chorus of deep regret. Cornwallis thought back to university, downing bottles with his dorm mates and the company they kept, finding the desire to drink again the following evening. It felt now another life altogether.

“I’m still on UK time,” Tarleton replied nonchalantly when asked.

“Do well to get over that,” Cornwallis nodded.

“They already booked my return. Wednesday. Through Brussels.”

“Ouch,” Cornwallis winced. “Who did you manage to piss off so severely?”

Tarleton gave him a hard look, not blaming but searching. In truth, the ambassador knew what this was and hoped his expression did not betray him. The FBI and NYPD had coordinated with the Foreign Office to get Tarleton to talk through the promise of a torture not explicitly forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Cornwallis himself had had nothing to do with the arrangement and rather pitied the boy whom, he suspected, had nothing to do with Arnold’s disappearance whatsoever, aside from staging a mock-cover up form which many benefitted financially and which saw Tarleton’s old school-mate realised from confinement. No one had been hurt by the manoeuvre, but the ambassador had his doubts as to how well Tarleton would be able to convince his critics. The boy seemed to have no care for the whims of the crowd.

Marion would interrogate him at Tallmadge’s request when they reached Arlington. Tarleton was not familiar enough with the local motorways to understand that they were not on their way to Capitol Hill.

“I’m really not sure,” Tarleton said of his ticket. “Ferguson was my first guess, but I spoke to him this morning and I believe him when he says he had no hand in it. How would he though … now that I’ve a think on it. No matter. I’ll survive,” he lied. “There are a million ways one might waste time with an excess of it at hand. I’ve been trying to read Ulysses, for example, since I was in the sixth form. Did you ever notice that airport newsstands have exactly five books on offer, no matter what country you are in and none of them make any solid sense? It is always something like Joyce that you avoided reading at school, something that a teenager might actually indulge in, a trivial bestseller form a year before, a revisionist biography of the last twentieth-century politician to have died and - my personal favourite - a travel guide of the place you are leaving.”

“How far did you make it with Ulysses?” Cornwallis laughed at the assessment’s accuracy.

“Record? Around five pages.”

“I got through a full chapter in Frankfurt waiting for a picket line to break.”

“I hate Europe.”

“Where would the classics be without continental incompetence?” the ambassador mused.

“Fair,” Tarleton smiled. Cornwallis felt his face fall. He had developed against his better judgement a certain fondness for the boy, and hoped it would not come to this. Continental Europe was awful enough without self-important, self-imposing novels to contend with. He wondered if he might have anything in his own library he might lend.

“It is a pity,” he commented when they passed a sign letting them know they were in Virginia.  “If you were staying around for a few more days I’d have taken you to a few tourist attractions – Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg – it would be fun. You could fire a colonial era musket. Took the kids last summer.”

“Excuse me?” Tarleton blinked, brought back from Brussels or the Dublin of dawn of the twentieth century.

“Figured that would be right up your alley.”

“No … it is, to be sure. It is only … doesn’t it astound you that you can take your children to a series of educational theme parks where they can learn to fire a gun, but where you can’t smoke anywhere?”

“Cigarettes are more hazardous to the overall health of a population.”

Tarleton’s face twisted in confused objection.

“It is something you get used to,” Cornwallis shrugged of their American cousins, uncertain when he had accepted the norms of what the colonists considered civilian life.

“I suppose it is part of their history,” Tarleton dismissed. “What is closest to Washington? Yorktown? How late are they open? Maybe we’ll have time for reconquest,” he laughed. Cornwallis recognised something in it.

“Something about you reminds me of the American War, somehow … it has been troubling me since last night when we were discussing how the colonists all seemed to be named after fruits or founding fathers -”

“Oh, because of my daughter’s given name? I get that from my ex, too – says it reminds her of an old Gwen Stefani song. It wasn’t my intent, but there is no standard feminisation of ‘Banastre’ and I had to improvise … needless to say we call her Georgie, her middle name – Georgina … less fruit-like.”

“No, no,” Cornwallis shook his head, “I meant, forgive me, I know you were named for some footballer or another, but I was somehow associating your name with someone else and I’ve only just come on context. Tell me,” he said with some scepticism, his eyes shrinking to match the hour, “by any chance was your father the same mayor who tried to make Mel Gibson issue a public apology to the City of Liverpool for ‘The Patriot’?”

“Oh, yea, yea – right. No, that was him, the mad cunt,” Tarleton could not help but smile at the recognition. “The best thing about that episode was that my old man made it plain that that he was playing into the US’s understanding of itself. Other than an executive use of pyrotechnics, it is about the most blatantly American film trope conceivable, ‘innit? High drama at city hall that demands an immediate police response and public reckoning. Bless.”

“Did it work?” the ambassador wondered.

“If I remember correctly, the studio reimbursed his ticket, but by that point we had the film on VHS and my little brother and sister had watched it half a hundred times. Brilliant, that. I don’t think anyone in Hollywood ever said sorry to the local hero on whom the film’s villain was based, but there were probably a few hundred articles written around that time about my city’s proud history which had likely been my dad’s principle ambition with the whole venture. I’m not being entirely ironic in telling you: ‘Come to Liverpool. Not only have we the nation’s best mash without contest, but we also – apparently - don’t shoot children in churches.’”

“Pity, that,” Cornwallis said dryly, the sentiment giving him pause. “No Banastre, you shoot children down at the pier.”

“That was in Portsmouth,” he replied with acid after a few minutes slipped into a silence that pounded like the drums of war. “And I didn’t shoot anyone. Not then.”

Charles Cornwallis desperately needed an aspirin. His attaché could do well with a strong sedative.

“You don’t know what it is, to spend so long in national defence,” Tarleton spat. “You stop seeing things with respect to the widely accepted construct of reason. I can’t apologise for my actions last autumn, Sir. I did in the moment what I thought necessary to keep Britain safe.”

“It isn’t mine to pass judgement, but you should know that the American’s think such their God given right. You are sure to answer a few question on the incident, I feel it only right to prepare you.”

Tarleton sighed. Burring his face in his full hand and letting the half that remained of the other continue to rest on his knee, he asked without inflection, “We are going to The Pentagon, aren’t we?”

“We are.”

“Good. That’s brilliant. Let them bring it, I’m always keen for battle of any sort.”

“You might try to be less cavalier,” Cornwallis warned.

“Sir, I can’t return to Britain. I should have died in the desert six years ago. I’m not cut out for civilian life,” Tarleton admitted without meeting his eyes.

“Too much?”

“It’s not,” the colonel remarked, strangely solemn. “In all honesty I spent the whole of the night considering it. I’m having second thoughts about our level of cooperation with the NYPD. We ought to have sent them Edmund Hewlett’s medical transcripts.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?”

“It is not in the United Kingdom’s national interests to allow Arnold’s defence bill to pass as it is written. Have you read André’s original proposal?”

“An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?” Cornwallis mused to himself.

“I didn’t take Latin at school,” Tarleton responded. “Arabic and Spanish – but I switched the latter to German my final year because the class was making a trip to das Bundesrepublik for the World Cup -”

“Die.”

“What?” the boy sneered.

“ _Die_ Bundesrepublik,” Cornwallis corrected.

“Oh. I never was one for foreign languages. I heard it said that they are only studied by people with nothing interesting to say in English – meaning, of course, no disrespect -”

“The quote is from the Peace of Westphalia - ‘Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?’”

“Fair critique.”

The ambassador nodded. He had long had misgivings of his own about the assignment and his NATO allies who would resort to such measures. “I have orders to insure that the Americans issue precedent that Britain may follow suit. We have half an hour before arriving for our meeting with Washington. Convince me, Colonel - why I should refrain from following Her Majesty’s request?”

“I accidently killed a twelve year old by applying a high voltage charge to the parts of him that determine his gender,” Ban Tarleton told him in a voice that betrayed little emotion. Cornwallis knew this, he had known this prior to the colonel’s visit to the embassy, but the cold disconnect between the younger man and his actions caused the ambassador to straighten his posture as he listened. “It is not the worst of what I’ve done for my country if we are assigning morals arbitrarily, but the evidence shows that Her Majesty’s government has its issues with my implication of the training I have already received. John André would create such episodes en masse. I asked myself in the small hours what it might look like should someone with my training and no concept of what separates military and civilian life – something which the implementation - especially the widespread implementation of this study would surely rob them of would look like, thinking back to the times in my own life defined by fear in which I had no orders to serve as guidance. I realised I already have a clear understanding. If I may?” he asked, indicating to the top button of his dress coat. Cornwallis nodded his approval and watch in agony and embarrassment as the colonel struggled to remove his brass covered blazer with limited use of what was once his right hand. It was not that he had not learned to shoot with his left hand, Tarleton forced himself to laugh, but rather that he could not put on his gas mask on quickly or correctly in the event of an NBC situation. “Nuclear biological chemical,” he clarified. It took him fifteen minutes each morning just to dress himself. “I’m sorry,” Cornwallis said, lost for a more appropriate response.

“I ought to be the one to apologise. It doesn’t fail me that my scars cause others discomfort, there is little I can do for it though. It is another war wound of sorts I mean to show you, here,” Tarleton said once he had the blazer of his formal uniform removed. He bent his left arm in the wrong direction which caused Cornwallis to wince, having instead prepared for blood and broken flesh. “I can’t fully lift this shoulder either,” he shrugged for empathises. “A few months ago, nearly a year now, a dear friend of mine was in hospital. She had miscarried and developed acute blood poisoning as a result. I visited her … made a donation, so I suppose in a sense now she is my little sister, but that is neither here nor there. I wasn’t my strongest but … I suppose that is of little relevance.”

“What happened?”

“John Graves Simcoe happened. Rather John André happened to Simcoe. It was his child –Simcoe’s - or would have been, you see. He flew in from America when he learned that Effie was in hospital, found out that she had an abortion on an emergency basis – I’m unsure if it registered. His mum – when he was a toddler – also lost a son in her seventh month and it destroyed his parent’s marriage from what I understand. Perhaps it was learned behaviour he was demonstrating – but I doubt it. I severely doubt it. What you must understand Sir is that John and I went to school together. We shared the same room for seven years. We were on multiple teams together, an assortment of extracurriculars – I know this man, at least, I knew him. I couldn’t recognise the John I saw screaming incoherently at a poor woman lying in a hospital bed. He looked as though he was ready to attack her, which prompted me and several others to intervene. Granted I was weakened from having given blood, I’m not quite so tall or strong as John and never have been, but he … as he continued to insult Effie,  - Effie Gwillim, whom he once filled books of poetry about, sullen afterwards that his words could not begin to properly praise her – he fought me off. Separated the joints in my arm with a single tug and twist. After a combined effort removed him from the room, it took three men to tear him from me. We all knew him growing up. We all did sport together. Granted, when he played he played to win but it wasn’t as though … if he was shown a card he wouldn’t argue the decision. It was not as though he would mercilessly beat an opponent for a perceived foul. Fuck this kid … he read and wrote _poetry_. He was shy and socially awkward, but smart … really smart. And kind besides. I think he hated me half the time … thought I talked too much, at any rate. Still he helped me revise when I needed it – even if I thought I didn’t. He is probably the reason I got into Oxford rather than a more willing and worthy applicant. He is not the sort for – do you know what it’s like, when they fix your joints? It hurts just as much if not more than the initial separation. It never comes back fully right,” he said, demonstrating the extension of his elbow once more.

“I was a really shit kid by comparison … probably why I’m as strict as I am with my own daughters now … but John was, well he was something else. Haughty, for sure, a little arrogant – you always had the feeling he was mocking you – but he wasn’t violent in a base manner. André killed the John Graves Simcoe I knew. He tried to murder Edmund Hewlett in a more literal sense to that end – to make John react in whatever way would meet Arnold’s satisfaction. And can you imagine – you know the Hewletts, don’t you? What it must have done to Edmund to see John so completely broken … I have to think he blames himself. That is all they do. Those kids. All they ever have. That is André’s goal though – the way John was that day in hospital – he wants to create an army of men who meet emotional turmoil with blind aggression. This is not something we want running rampant, Your Excellency. Can you imagine for a moment what society would look like if Britain’s best -a not insignificant portion of the population - had my ills grafted upon them? I feel – no. I know. I know that I was being selfish, too eager to please my superiors in an effort to secure an extended commission that I know to be out of my reach,” he gestured with his mangled hand. “I should have advised you to send the files to Inspector Tallmadge. With them, he might succeed where I am sure to fail.”

“Colonel Tarleton,” Cornwallis replied, “I’ll give you all of the support I am at liberty to offer.”

“Sir?”

“I still think you ought to consider a career in politics.”

“Why is that?”

“You care about your country and its people; you’re willing to risk sacrifice that they not come to harm … you’re viscous, vicious and manipulative, but above all …”

“What?”

“You are absolute shite at diplomacy.”

They shared a genuine laugh.

“I’ll do all that I can to aide you in your cause, but when we get to Arlington, this is what you need to do -”

 

* * *

 

When Charles Cornwallis accepted his appointment to the Embassy, a friend had gifted him with a thin Langenscheidt as a joke – the dictionary was meant as a guide for translating English into American and vice-versa. He had flipped through it a few times for a laugh but it now sat somewhere in his library. As with aspirin and fatty meats, what he felt needed most was not on hand.

“Many mickles make a muckle,” George Washington responded when Colonel Tarleton presented his credentials. The boy looked at him for help he could not provide. Washington was an intimidating presence as it was. He never sat during meetings, regardless of their duration. He never smiled. He never said more than what he meant. The problem was it was so difficult to decipher his codes.

“He knows who you are, Colonel,” Billy Lee, the Pentagon’s Press Secretary began to translate, “he demands to know what it is you think you are doing here.”

Cornwallis took a deep breath. Tarleton smiled.

“Your Excellency, I’m here because I believe Senator Arnold was the victim of his own project. I know, at least, who caused him to come to harm.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This is why we can’t have nice things, dar-ling …_
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> Want to do some notes so we can get out of here (and out of the southern theatre)? Let’s have at it-
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> Every child in Germany learns about **Bertolt Brecht’s school-age stroke of genius** some time in their educational career. As a teacher and formally shit kid, here is how you too can make it work: don’t use it right away. Let a few weeks pass after you have first been introduced to Herrn K. before making your move. You need to first ask about a legitimate mistake you’ve made. Probably do that twice before marking spelling and syntax errors that don’t exist and asking your teacher what you have done wrong. He or she (having by now forgotten the story they relayed) will be like “Oh no, what was I thinking?” and adjust your grade accordingly. You’re welcome. ;) 
> 
> I don’t like to logroll (really) but if for some reason you are curious in an expanded version of ‘Eugene Hewlett thinks his brother is being poisoned’, [Joust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12743886/chapters/29065644) is set in the week this first became a matter of consideration. It is told by Effie Gwillim and is (mostly) about her first crush. 
> 
> Was Tarleton’s internet breakdown disturbing? I based it loosely on the transcripts of the U.S. military tribunals in Nuremberg after WWII and the current programme of the AfD. The news items he cites in his tirade were also based on German sources, namely the online editions of ‘Rhein Zeitung’ (a local paper) and ‘Die Welt’ (a national one). Neither have a particularly right-wing focus.
> 
> If you've a mind to do so, you can call me out on Tarleton’s use of ‘Gutmenschen’ when he later demonstrates that he does not know the gender article for ‘Republik’. Both are political terms that I was all-but-certain had since passed into English the way ‘Realpolitik’ and ‘Spitzenkandidat’ have. IN CASE I AM WRONG, here is an English language explanation for the term: **Gutmensch** (German cultural term similar to "do-gooder"; literally good human) is an ironic, sarcastic disparaging term for a person or a group. Those who use the term believe that Gutmenschen have an overwhelming wish to be good and overeagerly seek approval. This comes along with moralising and proselytising behaviour and a dogmatic, absolute perspective, which does not allow deviant views. In political rhetoric, Gutmensch is used as a polemic term.
> 
> Though Ban’s father did historically serve the office in the 18. Century, the Mayor of Liverpool who demanded an apology from Mel Gibson over **‘The Patriot’** in 2000 was Edwin Clein. No apology was forthcoming but the studio did in fact reimburse £5 of the ticket price for people who mailed their stubs in – it took over a year to process all of the complaints. (No one tell me that people who write modern AUs do so to avoid research.) XP I’m fronting, I’ve got nothing but love for the city of Liverpool and the calamity that is its local government and would probably look into such things for a laugh anyway.
> 
>  **“An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?”** said by Axel Oxenstierna to his son, when the latter expressed doubt about how his negotiation abilities would match against those of more experienced statesmen and diplomats. The **Peace of Westphalia** ended the Thirty Years War in 1648.
> 
> Side note to some other dialogue in this scene, did I initially decide to include Tarleton just because of the criticism TURN received for making Simcoe’s character closer resemble the nightmare narrative of Bloody Ban than um … the historical John Graves? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Up Next: Ben Tallmadge has a (really) bad day.


	38. The Hang-up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tallmadge gets a break in a case he has been pursuing for years; Gwillim gets a break on a story. Hewlett finds that he may lack an inner best to allow him to match Simcoe’s edge in interrogation. Ferguson watches on as his oldest enemy waltzes with the Five Families. But first, a diva discovers that her having complained to a psychologist about a playboy and his friends a decade earlier may have contributed to the disaster now unfolding across the Atlantic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may gather from the summary, this is an incredibly long chapter (even by my standards) so I will be brief up front. Talking to a friend recently, I heard a rumour that Sam Roukin “knows fanfiction is a thing” and while I have absolutely no reason to suspect _Hide and Seek_ would hold any interest for the actor or those who run in his circles, I feel I ought to take this opportunity to say (just in case) that I am sorry for all the cheap shots I take at Everton fans. You guys don’t deserve half of the calamity you have suffered this season and should absolutely be contending for Europe.
> 
> I make no apologies however for anything I’ve insinuated about Liverpool (FC, or the local government – to tangent here right quick, I had to do some analysis this week for something unrelated that required me to read a whole bunch of statistical data from the 2011 census and can you guess at what strange bit of information will always stick out in my mind going forward? The slogan that the city council decided to go with was “it’s liverpool” [sic] Is that honest advertising or an attempt to lower expectations? The world will never know, but either way I think it is brilliant.) 
> 
> More to my fourth favourite city and the football in it, I find that I also can’t quite bring myself to say sorry for hopping on the LFC bandwagon this week. Seriously, I don’t have a side in the Premiership but seeing Pep’s City get kicked out of the CL has given me a **joy** that has long evaded my sport-watching experience. YNWA! (Um …) 
> 
> Enough of that though. Let’s do some warnings: day drinking, casual (and blatant) classism, collusion (this is really a constant as of late …), police brutality, shattered Omertà, bad business, attempted extortion, arranged marriages, break-ups and heartbreak, oh, and minor character death. To quote a cast member you can quickly forget: _„I promised you blood, and my dear – I always deliver.”_ ;)
> 
> And my dears, as always – I hope you enjoy!

“Bit early for that, isn’t it?”

“What,” Mary scoffed as she pushed passed, proceeding into the kitchen with a bottle of prosecco, a girlish smirk and skip in her step. “You’re awake.”

“Barely,” Effie Gwillim scowled, wishing she had not sent the maid out on errands, wishing she was better at dismissing unwanted visitors herself.

At an address like One Hyde Park, neighbours, like price per metre square, were meant to be a mere symbol of prestige. It was one thing to wonder at the names of fellow tenants, at where yours fell in comparison to theirs when the building featured on a clickbait list of the ten most expensive residential properties in Great Britain; it was another altogether to be forced to associate. There seemed to the owner and editor of The Daily Mail - fifth* listed in a tally of socialites with six-million-pound flats in the heart of London (*first, were her publication running the piece) - something entirely too proletarian about conversing with the woman who lived in a penthouse two stories beneath her own.

At ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning, Effie hated that she knew the school schedule of Mary Robinson’s like-named thirteen-year-old daughter. She hated that she knew the address of the butcher the seemingly ageless icon went to twice a week to purchase small cuts of specialty meats for the papered Yorkie she continued to carry in her Birkin long after the Americans who started the disgusting trend had all sent their own small dogs to ‘live on a farm’ (as was the politically correct term for euthanasia in two-thousand-eight when such animals ceased being fashionable.) She hated that Mary, who had cancer, a child, a string of celebrity lovers, a role in some West End production or another, a forthcoming sixth album and sometimes–custody of the rodent she called a dog, still, evidently, found the time and energy to go to the spinning class in which they both were enrolled. Effie, shamefully, had herself gone all of twice in as many months – but then, as she tried and failed to comfort herself, her own short legs did not warrant or enjoy nearly as much attention as those of a pop princess.

Mrs Robinson, nearly forty and, at this hour, make-up free, still looked like the cover of a woman’s glossy – what little girls aspired to be when they grew up and what young women who had since disappointed impossible societal ideals called ‘Photoshop’ with forced distain. Effie, who had to live with the hard truth that her nosey neighbour was indeed every bit as beautiful as she was on _Seventeen_ (and _at_ seventeen), was a mess by contrast and comparison. At ten on a Tuesday, she wore a bathrobe over the camisole comparative laziness designated as pyjama, her unkempt hair in a bun that itself confessed to the reality that she had yet to brush her teeth either. She was exhausted both emotionally and physically (although the last few days were more numerous than the sum of her movements in them.) Her uninvited guest in trendy sportwear seemed to dance despite sore muscles through the otherwise unused kitchen, occasionally lifted by the fairy wings Effie was sure she would see were her eyes not so strained from having stared at a computer screen for what felt the longer part of her existence.

“Mimosa?” Mary asked, pulling a container of orange juice out of the refrigerator and a bottle of sparkling wine that Effie suspected was not properly chilled out from the canvas tote she had carried in.

“Um – I’ll just take it straight if it is all the same,” Effie surrendered as Mary produced two glasses from the cupboard. “Ellie has been gone for a week and the juice has been open for at least as long.”

“For someone with a master’s in agricultural science she really objects to chemistry,” Mary frowned, pouring the remnants of the fair trade™, organic™, preservative-free™ and slightly patronizing™ beverage into the sink after sniffing it. She shook her head at the emptied container. “What, pray tell, is the point of progress if you’re not going to flavour your foodstuffs with formaldehyde? No matter, we have something to toast too.”

This, they most assuredly did not.

Effie Gwillim and Mary Robinson would not have been friends with one another had they not chanced into the same circles. Mary had fallen victim to the charms of an old classmate who had seduced her on a bet whilst still a student, she had then fallen in love with the sonnets she found scribbled on hotel paper in the room the two had first shared, and, upon learning that the words belonged to another man altogether, had been desperate to meet this John Graves and his muse. Effie had ceased serving that function sometime after her then-fiancé had taken a job overseas upon graduation. Mary -who had been married all the while and was wedded still - had ended her extended affair the pervious summer when she and her inamorato realised that they could not reconcile their disagreements surrounding his too-protective tendencies towards _her_ daughter ( _not_ his.)  Effie found herself wishing time and again that for the egos that boarder on immaturity which she sensed and sometimes saw in the parties that could not seem to co-parent, that she had been asked to declare a side after the split. Her choice would have been plain. Frankly, she was not entirely sure why Mary still felt it appropriate to associate; the two women had previously only ever enjoyed familiarity as a foursome.

On this morning in particular, Effie felt that the few things they had in common might only exist in the past tense.  

“You haven’t heard from Ban lately, have you?” she asked as casually as she could make her cracking voice sound.

“Why?” Mary blinked.

“No reason,” the editor replied with a shrug. Were Mary Robinson a regular Mail reader, she would have gladly regaled her with the apocalyptic undertones she found herself in the throes of ascribing to a series of email she had woken up to the previous morning from a school friend who now worked for the Foreign Office - begging for help, advice, or any alternative she might offer. Effie had no idea how to respond to the request, but then, as she had long assessed, people were given to only asking for input when they had already reached a decision. No one ever wanted to hear outside opinions; they wanted to hear the own echoed.

Effie Gwillim had no idea what to say that might help the unfortunate sender feel sound.

Colonel Banastre Tarleton had in all likelihood already acted on whatever impulse compelled him without affording consequence much of a second thought, without waiting for her echoes of approval to underline any justification he found fit. By the time Effie had finished reading the three attachments her eyes had no legal right to see, it seemed too late to save Ban from himself. She could not reach him by any means of communication and considered saying something to this end, but where she was merely worried for a former classmate, Mary would be absolutely devastated at the loss of her true love, keen though she otherwise seemed to pretend the boy had been to more to her than another passing fancy.

Learning that the mother of Ban’s (*adoptive) child had not been able to reach him for the past two days either, Effie’s distress turned to dread. She silently considered that she would never again have the pleasure of being told to ‘ _sod off_ ’ by the favoured son of one of Britain’s foremost families who –inexplicably- had spoken like a proper ‘lad’ even before feigning idiocy had become something a cultural aspiration. His ex, seemingly unaware of the plight that possibly faced the colonel, prattled on all the while over some footballer with whom she had been successful in ending ‘things’ amicably, as she poured prosecco for them to toast another ending. ‘Things’ Mary clarified with a wink at the pooch in her handbag, meant strictly that she had twice tricked the boy in question into walking the dog she had gotten stuck with sitting, leading to his naïve assumption that they two were in a committed relationship.

“It used to be so much harder – and rightly so,” the diva bemoaned. “I bore and birthed John Terry’s child and _barely_ achieved WAG status when that was something worth having. Now with everything on Instagram, I’ve dated half of London since Ban and I split – and I swear, it used to be people like you I blamed for putting such ‘packs of nonsense’ into the world,” she complained in Effie’s own language, “but it is _them_ , isn’t it? No – you know what it is? The help! I asked Anderson if he wouldn’t mind taking Mou out when Marie refused to do so and he told me – he actually told me - that whilst it was in his contract to watch me and/or my daughter take the wee thing for a walk, he was under no contractual obligation to hold the leash. Being that staff is so hard to replace, I couldn’t well put up a fight. I threw my trainers on, met a kid in the lift with a few puppies, batted my eyelids and asked if he wouldn’t mind one more. Next I know, I’m ‘dating’ Dele Alli per his own social media output,” she shook her head.

Effie mirrored the action for reasons all her own.

“I was at the office until two,” she said flatly, as much to the bubbly before her as the woman who had brought it. Mary squinted, tilting her head sceptically as though to say she knew that this had not strictly been the case (as a series of parking tickets Effie would later discover had already testified to without her being aware.) The editor had indeed been working from home, but absent her flat mate, the penthouse she had not left for days hardly held that distinction. She stared at the emptied juice container, fearing and feeling the loss of yet another friend, resenting Mary a bit more for having removed this artefact of her now-former presence. Effie had not been able to reach Ellie since the day after breaking the news on the Arnold disappearance in the British press. The distance was not in itself uncommon, but given recent calamity across the Atlantic, she was beginning to suspect that this particular bout of silence would become a permanent feature.

It stung. The two had lived together for most of their lives for most of their lives – first as schoolgirls thanks to a lucky accident of the alphabet, then at university (although they had attended separate collages) having both bided on the same house in Oxfordshire only to come to the conclusion that there was room enough for both of them (and five more of their girlfriends besides.) Most recently, they lived together at One Hyde Park, Ellie having relocated to London after Effie’s engagement had fallen apart.

Actions of solidarity spoke louder than words; it hurt all the same that Ellie would disappear without offering one. Effie suspected her flat mate to be somewhere in the developing world (or Scotland, which frankly, the newswoman counted as a colony despite some three hundred years of ‘unification’ for she maintained that a few farmers to the north of Hadrian’s Wall did nothing to make Britain ‘Great’.) She missed Ellie all the same, nearly as much as she missed how things had been before her name appeared below her own on their mailbox and above hers on a list of the building’s prominent residents, when the room the princess inhabited had been a nursery for the little girl Effie intended to name after the Sovereign (or, alternately, after herself – as Mary had done with Marie.) She missed the idea that John Graves Simcoe would come back to London to share her bed and in her complaints about the neighbours who had not entirely grasped the concept of good fences. Looking at Mary, she missed too whom the diva had been when she had been with Ban Tarleton, even if the two had been upstairs in her home far too often back when John’s name was on the lease and the flat was thus truly deserving of the title.

Actions of solidarity spoke louder than words.

Effie knew that her newly-single neighbour had not come up this morning to celebrate the fact that Dele’s dog Hugo (whom the Spurs player swore was not named after Lloris) had ceased posting to Instagram how much he missed going for walks with Mou (who had most decidedly been named for José); Mary was there, primarily, because she had reason to suspect that Effie was depressed. This fact hurt more than it ought when she felt it sink in. Effie Gwillim would not have extended anyone such concern and curtesy had it fallen upon her to do so, which she strongly suspected was why she was surprised to the point of resentment that anyone still took such cares towards her.

“What for?” Mary gaped in reaction to her ‘office’ comment with more theatrics that the editor felt deserving of at this hour, though she was in the process of putting on a show of her own which someone with as much stage experience as the famous ‘Perdita’ likely saw straight through.

“Honestly,” Mary seemed to scold, “What in heavens are you working on? You’re the only one not running a cover story on how Edmund Hewlett’s -”

“Wedding is adversely affecting the British economy?” Effie finished, having evaluated the completion and found it wanting, adding, “I’m not The Guardian,” as though the very insinuation was a slight.

The Daily Mail had been started by Effie’s great-great grandfather in response to sudden, widespread literacy (possibly, she joked in better moods, in an attempt to combat it.) Nearly one-hundred fifty years after the proletariat had learned to read, Britain as a whole remained unable to understand numbers they found in print as Mary Robinson, herself ordinarily far cleverer than the combined whole of The Mail’s audience, stood proof. People bought Effie’s paper because it posed no challenge to their comprehension. This reality, she reasoned, might have proven too much for the mid-morning cognitive skills of someone who only read the ‘Culture’ and ‘Lifestyle’ sections of lesser tabloids given prestige status based solely on the supposed political leanings of the board. If her own readership did not care about wedding kitsch around the prince the press as a whole had otherwise long forgotten, Effie Gwillim could not be bothered to.

For the moment, she had far too much on her mind for either Mary or her topics of conversation.

“Five-hundred-million pounds lost in estimated revenue from tourism and tea-towels,” the blonde continued to rant, “Five-hundred … how do you think they even came on that figure?”

Effie sighed. She was not entirely sure herself. “I think John would say that whoever did the maths calculated current prices and rates against expected inflation should Brexit pass and sensationalized it. Edmund would say that all statistics are made up on the spot, which is also somewhat exaggeratory -”

“Oh, honey,” Mary pouted -dramatically- at hearing John’s name, pouring ever more prosecco into a glass that Effie assumed was meant for her until it was filled to the brim. The amount of alcohol now at play made Effie suspect that her neighbour was after something beyond her comfort based on past behaviour, but raised a toast all the same, hoping it would deflect from her sudden embarrassment.

Rather than wonder if there was enough bubbly on earth to make them both forget the point of reference around which her initial reaction had formed, Effie, after taking a sip, succumbed to a slightly different frustration. “It doesn’t matter anyway, does it? Until last week, no one assumed Edmund would find a woman to marry him. _Ever._ Full stop. The only thing the unfortunate timing of his American nuptials could possibly affect in the realm of UK tourism is the fact that Ellie’s wedding will have to be moved back a full season, and it is not as though anyone is expecting hordes to show up at the city gates to toast the new duchess-consort. No one wants another loveless marriage. The Royals don’t want it because one – commoners bring more bank, and two – such would give the Hewletts too large a share in the crownlands for anyone’s comfort. The people don’t want it, they want the whole fairy tale. Knights slaying dragons and winning thereby the heart and hand of a princess.”

“Yeah,” Mary smiled, smarting, “I liked those stories even when you had me playing evil-witch-by-proxy.”

Effie rolled her eyes. “Bitch, you played yourself there.”

“I’m serious. It is better than imagining of all the money the economy will never see or the cute-as-it-is-kitsch Edmund + Anna teacup I will apparently never own. I take it you two are still in a fight though?” she pried. “That why you’ve hidden yourself away?”

“I’ve just been busy with work,” Effie dismissed her. “Ellie and I are fine insofar as I know. She is probably working, too.”

“Ellie is at her ancestral home to my daughter’s great chagrin. Marie doesn’t get on with the other sabre instructor and makes careless mistakes as a result which only,” Mary took a deep breath and readjusted. “I was having drinks with Ells shortly before she left – guess who with,” she rolled her eyes before beginning a short rant. “Bastard showed up at mine, handed Mou over without affording me any prior warning – said that he would be out of the country for a few weeks and that he had something from America that Ells just had to come along to hear. Guessing from the frantic tone it was not a new hit single the PPL will surely drag its feet on licencing in the UK … but _you_! I haven’t seen you in two weeks and I am beginning to worry. Everything alright, love?” she asked with concern she did not bother to disguise.

“I was on Twitter Sunday night,” Effie protested. “We had that ‘fight’ about world leaders with no sense of club loyalty.”

“You … do realize that doesn’t count?”

“Mary look, the world is about to implode. Work is just -” 

“Well, you are taking the night off,” the diva interrupted with a sudden, wide grin. “I’ve the whole thing planned. I rang Olivia last night - she is hosting Angie in Hamburg and I think that you, me and Mou here could hop a flight -” she chimed whist puckering towards the Yorkshire Terrier that had yet to hop out of her purse. The animal was well over ten years in age; Effie wondered if it still could free itself from its crushed-leather cage without assistance.

“I am not flying off with you to some … strip club. And you know you can’t bring _that_ on a plane,” she indicated to the family pet which she still could not fathom zoology classified as a canine.  

“Ignoring how desperately you need some dick in your face, you really don’t want to see if Frau Chancellor can get her freak on? Mary-Anne and Ri-Ri are already in – I hate to say it but you know who you are turning into?” Mary wrinkled her nose.

“Wait … ‘Angie’ as in Angela Merkel?” Effie blinked, pulled out of the mental list she was making of other breeds she did not count as being dogs. “What on earth has she to do in such an establishment?”

“Oh - Olivia Jones is one of the people who gets to choose the next President,” Mary winked. “I suspect the two are bosom buddies.”

Oliva Jones was a drag queen who owned a number of sex clubs in the depraved city that doubled as the centre of the German-language newspaper industry. As the international edition of her paper was printed on location, Effie Gwillim had previously experienced enough of the Hamburg’s nightlife to satisfy all of her sexual curiosities in a single business trip. As it happened, she did not have many and was embarrassed to learn that the chancellor had any at all.

“Very democratic,” Effie scoffed at the krauts’ limited electoral process.

“Don’t pretend that is the weirdest thing you have heard all week.”

“Were that only the case.”

“Anyway … leased a plane … leaves at seven,” Mary sang.

“I can’t,” Effie persisted.

“You _barely_ have a choice. You need to come, if for nothing else than to apologise to Rihanna, she’s mad as all get out over that Arsenal piece you ran recently.”

“Why is this a thing now?” Effie scoffed. “Why do foreign celebrities all seem to have a side in the Prem – I’m English and I don’t even – you know what, I don’t care. I really do not care at all. I’m sorry I just have … I have to figure something out. I can’t come with on your impromptu girls-night. Thank you, truly -but my answer is no.”

Unable to shake her shoulders of the weight they carried, Effie simply shrugged and turned away, returning to the laptop in her living room she had not closed for two days and the chaos that cluttered around it – used tea mugs, some emptied, some not, takeaway containers that had gone mostly untouched, Post-Its, pictures and postcards she had dug out of her nightstand. She hoped that Mary, whom she could hear following in toe, would not ask her to explain.

Effie turned back to the pile of letters she had reluctantly left when the doorbell first rang. Edmund Hewlett corresponded sometimes, John Graves Simcoe hardly at all. She had spent the better part of the morning searching the missives she occasionally received from the two New Yorkers for small changes in style in hopes of finding evidence that the study the US Armed Forces had helped sponsor had indeed made monsters out of the men she had known as boys.

Everything about her life would be easier to contend with if she could find an enemy deserving of the anger, hatred and blame her soul had too long contained.

Effie had not seen her beloved in nearly a year and now had reason to doubt that she ever again would recognise her John in the demon who had come to share his handsome face.

They had been engaged once.

She had nearly born him a daughter.

Painful as it was, Effie was consciously searching for reasons to cease hating herself for loving him still. All she had found thus far was the suggestion that the man she had planned to spend her life with no longer existed in any way she wanted to know.

“I’ll help,” Mary offered, quickly glancing over the paperwork with a tiny pout as she began to gather cups to bring back into the kitchen. There was no judgement in her voice, which Effie found as kind as the gesture itself. Kinder still would be for her neighbour to simply leave her to her tears. They were not themselves close, and Effie suspected that shared address aside, she would not know the starlet as anything beyond a celebrity feature story were the blonde not quite as near as she was to the very people Effie could not bear to think about at the moment.

She saw little Marie in all of her mother’s pretty features and recalled watching the wanton hate and fear that had followed Ban back from the warfront vanishing - if only for a short while - whenever he cuddled his daughters in the evening, reading to them with genuine joy and joviality until they eventually fell asleep despite their best efforts to prove how ‘big’ they were by staying awake. Effie hoped that John had some similar outlet, but strongly doubted that was the case. He had no one to love in New York, and no one, it seemed, would hazard to love him at this point in his life. Anna Strong, whom he had long written that he planned to propose to the moment her divorce was finalised, was instead marrying Edmund, who had long served a double role in John’s life as loathsome rival and oldest friend. John was lonely, for he must be now, and Effie felt the sting of no longer being enough to fill the void that threatened to swallow him. But then, how could she possibly hope to be? She had not seen the changes that had slowly stolen him away from her until it had been too late for any love to be salvaged.

She wanted Mary Robinson to leave her to her regrets, the happy memories she would rather forget, to Jennifer Lopez’ entire romance-film repertoire that had been playing softly in the background on her big screen, providing her own broken story some sense of impossible narrative.

“You can’t help,” Effie sighed as she fell into a familiar chorus she hoped would create a semblance of normalcy, “I was thinking of calling my aunt … who I know I am beginning to resemble -”

“No,” Mary replied while studying an old photograph, “I can now assure you, you’re not. Your first reaction when I mentioned the economic sting of a royal elopement was to state what you assume John Graves Simcoe would have to say about how the figure might have been arrived at. And look at all this … this …” the word failing her, she simply exclaimed “Why, your auntie would never!”

Effie laughed in spite of the certain sadness she found in the inaccuracies of the comparison, so perfectly punctuated by the woman who jokingly offered a contradiction. If the all the world was a stage, Mary Robinson, certainly, would both star and direct, outshining any man cast as her opposite. For years, every time The Financial Times speculated that the Hewletts intended to move their offices out of Liverpool, she came around with a bottle of bubbly and a few altered photographs of her illicit lover and the woman she thought it wise to insinuate he was seeing on the side. This always accomplished desired effect of convincing the prospectors that the business - which both she and Effie held considerable stock in - was better than ever (though the market likely knew full well that these particular bearers of the Tarleton and Hewlett names had nothing to do with the deal that kept the factory doors open.) More often than not, Mary found a way to profit personally as well, having ended several incarnations of the same extended affair in ‘reaction’ to a rumour she herself had started, leaving Ban apologetically dismayed but ultimately none to wiser to his domestic partner’s constant scheming.

Mary Robinson was simply good at break-ups. She had plenty of rehearsal to assist her in the Dele Alli incident she was most assuredly not suffering now.

Effie’s Aunt Margaret was better still, for she could have improvised any act from her second-wave-feminist oeuvre to convince even the hardest of critics that a man -or _men_ in a more general sense - were not worth a press statement or second thought. Words in public put aside, Margaret Spinkels-Graves had been in a perfect, loving marriage for the past fifteen years. Maybe, Effie mused, happy relationships were based on high drama. She feared, however, that her own curtain had closed long ago.

Since reading the final attachment in the email she had been sent, Effie feared equally that she was owed a second act.

If John had indeed been brainwashed to meet fear with bouts of bellicosity, could she truly hold him to account for what he had said and done after she had lost the baby? Or had they grown so far apart at some prior point that she could not have recognised then and there that the man who came to see her in the hospital was not the same who had stolen her heart?

She swallowed a sob as she restarted ‘Maid in Manhattan’, cursing the title and the setting. At least, she consoled herself, it was Edmund Hewlett riding off into the sunset with a member of the middle-class rather than the man who had sung this presumably awful Anna Strong’s praises for the past few months. Effie considered the ways in which John had written over the barmaid, absent of the poetry that marked his earlier affairs. Was this to spare her, or had André taken his sonnets alongside his sanity? She stared blankly at one of too-numerous love stories she watched whenever she was upset and felt herself grow sick at the sight of the ugly New York skyline.

“I ran into her recently; did I tell you?” Mary offered, thankfully, without retuning to the topic of John. “We were at a gallery opening where I’d expected you would be - to give me context if nothing else. So, I am standing there looking at this piece when Margaret Spinkels-Graves comes up. I said ‘ _hello_ ’, she responded ‘ _there are a lot of people in Versailles today_ ’ and rolled her eyes -”

“Are you paraphrasing?” Effie tried not to smirk at the mental image of her aunt putting someone she secretly considered a quintessential Essex-girl into place.

“I’m not. The bitch literally Marie Antoinette’d me in front of all of London’s finest,” Mary giggled. “So, of course I burst out laughing - I mean what else can you do? But then I remember that every artist featured was a holocaust survivor or something and it felt inappropriate … and, and was, mind. But the world is such a mess right now that even had that faux pas made its way to the press no one would have cared, what with Senator Arnold, the Trump candidacy, Brexit, one of the Hewletts marrying an American and all of the money the world apparently will never get to waste on souvenirs with their strange faces on them,” she paused. Squinted. “Is it me or does that whole branch of the Royal Family look like they owe some of their genetic make-up to shit-Asia?” Mary gestured to her comparatively less-impressive and imposing cheekbones, continuing for context, “One of those former-Soviet ‘–stan’ countries where the Hewletts themselves grow poppy. I wonder if Fabienne Bouchard is really having another man’s baby or if they just had to say that because … you know,” she wrinkled her nose, “it could come out dark-skinned due to some latent gene. Ells gets grossly tan in the summer or whenever she is in South America – they probably all would if you let them out in the sun. I’d put money on that being why she is hiding up north now, having to make an official appearance at Easter as they do.”

“I will keep that in mind next time I need a neo-fascist fluff piece,” Effie tried to excuse herself, slightly uncomfortable in any conversation that threated to make her liberal-by-comparison.

“The Hewletts having odd features – for Brits, that is – doesn’t make me a racist! Honestly! I did that video with Beyoncé, remember? And if I were to resent Ellie or the others after all this time it would have more to do with bio-food products than what I strongly suspect to be foreign blood somewhere up the line.”

“Good,” Effie shrugged.

“Yes,” Mary grinned, echoing, “It is really a _good_ time for a mini get-away. Don’t worry,” she winked, “I’ll have you back before the next bomb drops.”

“I need to hang out here and see if it already has,” Effie replied, still staring blankly at a bad film.

“I’m calling your aunt. See if she wants to accompany me in your place,” her neighbour quipped.

“I feel safe in saying that I think she’ll pass.”

“…Up a chance to see men willing objectify themselves?” Mary challenged, raising her eyebrows without much creasing her brow.

“You have a point,” Effie smirked, albeit over her sudden suspicion that the physically flawless Mrs Robinson owed some of her perfection to Botox.

Mary sighed with an air of theatrics, replaced the teacups on the coffee table where she found them and relaxed herself into the sofa beside Effie, prying, as she was want to, “Or we could just … you know, sit here … talk about it, whatever it is …”

In another life, her neighbour would have made an excellent gossip columnist and, as such, Effie reasoned, she would have want of her.

“We can’t,” she insisted sharply, inviting her guest to leave with every visual cue she had at her disposal – glaring, pulling her feet closer to her torso and crossing her arms after turning up the volume on a film she had watched a thousand times or more.

Before she knew it, however, she was speaking of things she would have preferred not to voice.

 

* * *

 

“I think the man I loved may well … I think he may have done something simply dreadful and if I don’t figure out what to do with the information I’ve been shown, countless others lives could be destroyed in one fashion or another. But if I do speak … I know the consequences could be severe for at least one person I care quite deeply for, and I … Oh, Mary! I think … I think there is a decent chance already that …” she began to sob. There were too many things that simply could not be said to present company, yet she had no one else to tell.

John Graves Simcoe and Edmund Hewlett, Effie relayed, had been part of a study that the US Armed Forces had plans to replicate and implement on a much larger scale should Senator Arnold’s controversial defence bill pass. No one knew this detail of his proposed package, and in his absence, no one cared. It seemed Congress would ratify the motion without much oppositional debate as a fearful public had taken to the street in support.

The press had been quick to pin the disappearance on organised terror. The police, as she knew from what little contact she had to the colonies, had instead decided to focus their attention on the original victims. Effie considered that Ban -whom she knew to be incapable of keeping his pretty mouth shut - had carbon copied one or both of the New Yorkers who shared their alma mater in the same email he had sent her, or that John and Edmund had come to learn about the study through some other means.

The media had no particular interest in this angle, but from all Effie could tell from and ocean away, Dr John André had gone missing the same night Senator Arnold had.

To her mind, John had taken vengeance on the doctor who had ruined his life and nearly ended his dearest enemy Edmund’s altogether. He had likely found him in the company of his government patron and decided it in his interest to leave no survivors.

It pained Effie to imagine that John had become such a man. It was possible that she was given by occupation to colour everything with blood, but from what she had researched into DI Ben Tallmadge, the leading detective seemed a man of reason and judgement. If after a week he suspected that her friends were guilty, Effie had to accept the reality he sought to prove as her own.

Upon hearing this, Mary gave a counter argument that the whole affair a matter of politicking. The senator was not missing at all. He had returned to Washington a few days early and was watching on comfortably from his mansion on the Chesapeake Bay as the world burned in his name, playing the fiddle to bide time until his ultimate triumph. Effie, unexpectedly, began weeping once more at her neighbour’s choice wording, reminded of John’s love for history and Latin, reminded of his strong, calloused hands running through her curls as they lied together in bed after making love, him softly reciting poetry in dead languages in his peculiar high-pitch. It hurt nearly as much to know that no other women would ever get to know John in this particular context as it had recognising that she herself would never inspire another verse of love.

“Arnold, from what I gather, is given to speaking the same way, well, not in terms of intonation but,” Mary tried to comfort her. “I think it is just the educational background we all share. The way your aunt mockingly refers to me as ‘the English Sappho’,” she tried to laugh. “I know that when Ban was injured and the two were riding back to basecamp, Arnold called him ‘Scaevola’ – which, of course, Ban found hilarious, countering his then-CO with the ‘American Ares’ epilate that later found its way into a campaign. I didn’t mean to make you sad. I was probably just remembering that story and let it influence my visual.”

“My God … Arnold was the one who saved Ban’s life?” Effie gaped, finding a new dimension to her fears.

“That is why we have a picture of him on our mantel," Mary squinted as though to question how she had never noticed it. "Well, had rather, with all of the other shit Ban thought warranted display: his awful siblings and their combined hundred children, a couple of tweets from Kanye’s epic meltdown he printed and framed for ‘inspiration’, an Everton pre-season team photo, that picture that I saved in the breakup for future blackmail of him and a few lads from his boarding school days dressed up as the Spice Girls -”

“John was Geri,” Effie sniffed.

“… do you want me to go down and get it for you?” Mary smiled. “It might help you stop mourning your loss.”

“It isn’t that. No, I … they used to be so close. I thought – I hoped – that with Ban in the colonies, he could help turn the tide as it were, but if Arnold holds his loyalty – and why wouldn’t he? I think he might … I think Ban might instead end up doing everything in his power to get John, and possibly Edmund, convicted of a crime I for one don’t want to believe they committed. I mean, you probably know better than anyone what the colonel is like when he is angry, irrational -”

“I probably do. You’re right,” Mary responded, surprisingly sharp. “And from that position of authority I’m telling you not to worry. From what I understand he is in the US in a purely advisory capacity, likely telling Congress how to capitalize on Arnold’s disappearance. Having no other future job prospects, he won’t do anything to screw this up for himself. He isn’t _stupid_ ,” she defended.

“He told Cornwallis not to comply with Tallmadge’s request for the embassy to release Edmund Hewlett’s complete medical. He then emailed me saying that he was having second thoughts about it, that he should rather strive to work with the NYPD.”

“Ignore it?” Mary shrugged.

“I can’t. Too many people I love would be hurt if this thing that I know it to contain were to come out, too many people in general will be hurt if Tallmadge doesn’t get enough evidence to subpoena André directly before Arnold’s bill comes for a vote.”

“It wasn’t fair of Ban to put that choice on you,” Mary said after a moment’s deliberation. “I wish he and I were on better terms, I could maybe -”

“No. What was ‘not fair’ was for Ellie to put this on _him_.”

Although her best friend had always been evasive on the subject, Effie knew that Ellie faulted own her family for the way it faced threats from outside and in. She blamed her mother for the strokes suffered by Thomas Gwillim and Edmund Hewlett, the first of which had proven fatal.

Studying her father’s autopsy against Edmund’s medical records as Ban had requested in the accompanying email, it seemed to Effie that Ellie had always been right to suspect something in Edmund's illness was amiss. She had no right, however, to have first disclosed any of her suspicions to a mutual friend for whom stability had always been a struggle, regardless of however much she may otherwise hate him now.

Based on contextual evidence, Effie knew in her gut that Ellie had gotten Ban to act where she would not. She suspected this to be the way a girl she had never known to openly express ire meant to avenge the underaged smuggler she had been given no choice but to watch die. Ban Tarleton would be his own undoing. He would find a way to justify his coming death as he had every stage of his demise. Ellie Hewlett would combine her interests and expedite intent as she always had. Effie could not help but feel that the victory of either party would somehow ring hallow.

“I don’t want this,” Effie told Mary. “She will say it is about my late father, I know she will. I don’t want Ellie to do anything on my behalf. If there is anything to this -to the idea that Lady Edith murdered my dad - it is neither her battle to fight nor her sin to atone for and I have _never_ been able to convince her of such.  And on top of all the other bullshit this week has brought, I am worried that Ban -” she stopped.

Mary betrayed nothing of pain as she continued the thought in Effie’s stead, “would do anything for her. He would do anything for _either_ of you – but forgetting him for a minute, did you ever consider, and please, I am not saying this to be cruel in any way – that whatever Ban and/or Ellie’s intentions,” she paused a long while, “that they are less altruistic than you seem to imagine?”

“That is exactly what I fear,” Effie began to speak quickly. “I’m afraid that this goes deeper than what little Ban let on. He just wrote ‘compare’. He may well have gotten others involved, John -”

Mary shook her head. “Effie … I’ve seen the article your father was handsomely paid not to publish. From what I remember of John, if he can’t deal with an emotion, he simply doesn’t. He may act out in destructive ways, but he only does himself harm. I wouldn’t … he is too far removed from the situation to cause an impact. Ban blames the Hewletts for every ill this world has ever suffered -if only because assigning his father any guilt would be akin to losing him again … Certainly, if there is a fight to be had, he’ll want a piece of it, but he isn’t armed to defend something he would find that he does not truly believe if confronted with the truth behind his convictions. As to Ellie, knowing her as long as I have … I’m nearly certain she suffered the same advances as her mother once did. The fact that she has not acted upon those feelings yet suggests to me that she won’t. I don’t understand what it is you are worried about. Ellie probably told Ban what happened to her when she was a girl, and yes, he is probably livid over it and rightly so, but haven’t you … at least mentally, prepared yourself for this eventuality? For whatever reason, he is the only person she has ever trusted her smile to, so why not her anger and tears as well?”

“No. NO!” Effie insisted, not wanting to consider what Mary implied about her best friend, especially when the accusation was taken from a story she herself had both helped bury and briefly exhume.

Mary turned away, pretending to watch the film’s protagonist fall victim to a lie she had never meant to tell. Effie tried to watch as well, having been rudely confronted with enough scenes of torture which she ought to have been empathetic to feel out on her own ages ago.

Ellie Hewlett had never dated. Effie had always assumed this owed itself to a superiority complex, not wanting to risk mixing with those below her station. This theory, however, was undone by countless evidence to the contrary. Her best friend was, and had always been, as republican as a princess could possibly prove herself. She was generous with her staff, through herself whole heartedly into every charity venture - handling society’s derelicts without a hint of elitist distain. However, the princess did not take to touch with the same sense of elegant decorum, often freezing or pitching a fit when uninvited fingers felt out for her.

Effie had personally never thought much on it. Ellie’s problem, she had long considered, was and had always been that she was giving of her energy and wealth to the point of it sometimes being off-putting. Paired with a resolve to offer no defence of her character, this left most to assume that she in truth was more ice princess than philanthropist, that she was a poster-child for everything wrong with the class system she ‘pretended’ to hate.

Effie wondered if she would rather have read the narrative her rivals had written than the one her closest friends seemed to hide in plain sight. As a friend, she hated to think that she and Ellie did not share the same closeness that the princess let herself enjoy with Ban, apparently Mary, and probably Ferguson, as well as a host of others far less worthy of her affections than Effie personally considered herself as comparatively being.

As a newswoman, she hated to be the last to know, especially, when she could well have been first on the scene.

Her late father Thomas Gwillim had, shortly before his death, written and had meant to publish an expose on the Duke of Richmond, who as a young man had been betrothed to Edith of the Gordons, one of the prettiest daughters of a rival to the country’s far north, fully a decade younger than he himself. He had evidently impregnated her on a stately visit when she was but thirteen, ending their engagement thereafter and looking to other, younger girls as a replacement, rumoured to have had affairs with a number of children living on his estate. In all the years since, he had never married.

Edna Hewlett, his daughter and thus true heir, had this been born on one of the northern islands, hidden away until the duke’s younger brother stepped up to do the ‘right thing’ by wedding his by-then-sixteen-year-old cousin in his brother’s place, with the Mail inventing a story of forbidden love coming to fruition and the public coming to adore ‘Edith and Edmund’ the way they never would have ‘Edith and Edward’ – though the bothers were all but identical in ways the eyes could see. Edna was briefly replaced by the newborn baby of a man who shared the Hewletts’ business interests, continuing the façade until the decoy was himself a toddler, at which point a five-year-old who had spent her life in isolation was brought to Edinburgh and told she was three.

Effie, who read the article the northern nobles had bought before it had been sent to print upon inheriting her position at the paper, had long considered the whole thing to be bullocks. It was, after all, just the sort of thing The Daily Mail would print in the weeks of late summer when parliament was not in session, America had released all of its blockbusters, and deadline-day was too far in the future for anyone to give a damn about sports that were not in season. No one would have killed her father for a lie that he had not explicitly told - not when the Mirror, Star and Sun all routinely crafted stories of the like they opened to public consumption. Effie did not see the article as a compilation of every narrative she watched govern her friends, she saw it as a coincidence that could prove dangerous in the wrong hands.

Knowing what Ellie and Eugene could be like when confronted with fictions surrounding their family, Effie decided it best if she kept the matter to herself, something her Aunt Margaret who, for twenty-two years had run the publication in her stead, advised was the wise thing to do.

The fact of its existence slipped out at a dinner party downstairs around a year later when Marie and a few of her little cousins emerged from her playroom in fancy dress, trying to trick her visiting aunt and uncle that they were, in fact, princesses of the Disney variety. Clayton Tarleton had laughingly made a comment that when he was a toddler he was dressed up as a princess too. ‘ _No, really, I was Lady Edna until I was about Marie’s age,_ ’ he had confided to close company. ‘ _It is clearly me being baptised on the cover of The Daily Mail_ ,’ he winked at Effie and her then-fiancée John, informing his supermodel wife and the teen idol his younger brother was in a committed relationship with that he had been a rather cute kid, that he had once heard something he had never bothered to verify about the real princess being sickly when she was little, that, or he claimed dramatically, teasing at the children, the whole charade he had been made party to owed itself to the fact that the Hewletts were a later offshoot of the Plantagenets, who as everyone learned in year six, were descended from the demon Melusine and therefore could not themselves be sprinkled with holy water.

Ignoring his brother, Ban told his ward that if her uncle could get over his ego so, too, could she – that she needed to go change into something appropriate whilst Effie repeated what she had just muttered. There was a certain darkness to Banastre Tarleton that he rarely laid so bare in his private life. Frightened by it, Effie obeyed, producing the unpublished article for her former classmate when she returned to the office the following morning. ‘ _Don’t say anything to Ellie or Gene,_ ’ she had made him swear. ‘ _To my mind this is all such a pack of nonsense, nothing to get them upset about._ ’

Unfortunately, the colonel understood nothing of the creative fiction tabloids produced on the daily.

Unfortunately, Effie Gwillim had neither taken that into account nor considered who else he might tell and how far the tale might travel.

“I’d been with Ban for two, three years before taking a job on Broadway,” Mary began anew. “He rang me one night, sobbing, begging for forgiveness -”

“Why?” Effie blinked, surprised at the turn.

“Oh,” she shook her head, speaking as though she relayed a few lines in a script from a play in which she had not been cast, “Ellie took care of some Headhunter he owned money to and then, in the heat of that moment, he asked her to marry him.”

“WHAT?” Effie demanded.

“She never told you?” Mary shrugged. “Frankly, I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised she refused him either. Ellie … can’t bear the idea of being with someone who fancies her which is why, or so I was told, I never particularly felt myself threatened by their friendship. I was just annoyed at Ban – always after exactly that which he will never find on offer: getting physically close to someone who cares for her works to trigger memories Ellie has no doubt fought to supress, and regardless if either was conscious of this or not,” Mary still seemed to recite.

“No. No Ellie wasn’t – no.”

“Why do you imagine she is so willing to marry Campbell?”

“Geopolitical manoeuvring,” Effie sneered.

“Ellie though?” Mary asked sceptically. “I am fairly sure she sees a loveless marriage as a fitting end. She will be free of her surname and of the unwanted advances of men she may want but can never hope to please.”

“Stop! You don’t _know_ that she was raped. You don’t _know_ that her mother was. Stop saying all of this as though it is _fact_. It is just a stupid thing my father wrote that I refuse to let become his legacy just because I mentioned it once in relation to some shit Clayton was on about one night.”

“Stop saying all of this as though it is fact?” Mary echoed. “This is rich given the source.”

_“I never!”_

Mary shook her head. “Look Effs – this isn’t just coming from me. As it works out, my ‘Wicked’ co-star was married to a psychologist, I – admit I was a bit annoyed over the whole matter at the time and this husband and I, we spoke a few times about Ban and all of his many … friends. Ellie, you, John, Gene, Mary-Anne, the Tarleton family that absolutely despised me and the Hewletts they may have hated just a wee bit more. I was furious with all of you at the time. Anyway, this doctor evaluated all of you from my tellings and gave me a means to test my theories – or his theories rather – about the realities of relationships insofar as I might ever hope to. Remember when I first rang and told you that the two were having a torrid affair? That wasn’t entirely on economic grounds – I really didn’t even expect Liverpool to benefit from the rumour in any way … Ellie though, oh Christ did she suffer in silence. She did nothing wrong, of course – nothing to encourage advances that, as you know, never existed outside of the isolated incident - but I enjoyed it all the same. For a time, anyway. When I realised I had come to value her friendship more than the romance I had been forcing for far too long, I let him go -”

Effie had stopped listening at psychologist. “Philomena Cheer was opposite you in ‘Wicked’,” she wisped. “Did you … her husband, um -”

“Oh, I don’t recall his name if I ever knew it. Why?”

“What do you remember about him?” Effie asked as she reopened her laptop.

“British, handsome in a vaguely effeminate way, I recall his voice strange as I know that sounds – his accent was so … staged, as it were. He put on airs and sounded posh,” she smiled. “Sometimes, to amuse myself when I tried of whimsy, I would say something to throw him and he would enunciate his vowels a bit harder than intended – I think he was Mancunian? Northwest, for sure. Being a fake-member of the upper echelons myself, I can always find out my fellow counterfeits.” Effie raised her eyebrows at this, vaguely surprised that Mary was self-aware, or, at least aware of how she came off in present company. “I ceased all communication a few weeks after meeting him when he made a pass at me,” the diva continued, “not wanting it to ignite any more backstage drama than already existed on set.”

“Is this him?” Effie asked, turning her screen to show a recent photo of John André she had pulled from the internet to her guest.

“Yes.”

“That is André.”

“Shit,” Mary said under her breath. “Yea … when you said Andrei I just had this mental image of more a Rasputin figure. That is Philomena’s husband, but it is not … I mean, it can’t be -”

“André wanted to study the effects of fear on the human psyche, believing that it could be altered into producing behaviour suitable for the warfront, that militant Islam had already figured this out and was employing it against the west. His proposed test group was a football club largely made up of immigrants with similar backgrounds in high-stress professions – as close as he would get to an ‘army’ before knowing if his methods worked. John and Edmund were among them. Mary, do you mean to tell me that André knew parts of their horrible backstory before even meeting them? Christ … no wonder they became the focus.”

Effie thought back to all of the things John might have said in Mary’s presence when she and Ban had first started seeing one another. Six months into a siege that had gone on to last over a decade, the then-second lieutenant had lost his father to prostate cancer and, on his death bed, gained a fortune which he quickly gambled into squander and a series of hard truths about the political situation of his city around the turn of the century which he (still) could not bring himself to grapple with. Needing a villain for his narrative who did not share his surname, he gravitated towards casting the younger brother of the Duke of Richmond with whom his father had been in business as his bête noire; a man, who, unfortunately for the flow of conversations to follow, happened to share a name with his eldest son.

Any mention of ‘Edmund Hewlett’ had been enough to turn John into what Effie had then known to be his worst self: huffy, sulking, bitter in ways that won him no sympathy. Effie’s own experience with the younger Edmund had been much different – he was conceited, yes, but at least in his case the vanity was deserved. Furthermore, Effie considered, it all but decimated on the occasions one was able to keep him in conversation for more than five minutes. Sadly, these were rare – the heir presumptive was painfully shy and had not the same interest in power politics as his siblings and the society in which they lived. She had urged John to make peace with the prince that he might make peace with his past.

Now, she lived to regret it.

By all accounts she had heard, John and Edmund had indeed become friends an ocean away from their original conflict, but this was under the influence of André, who may have been introduced to them through a series of rants over which Effie did not need to inquire. Mary Robinson knew Edmund the younger only as the heartless opportunist who shot horses and abandoned small children under heavy fire. John André, in turn, likely only knew John Graves as a single-minded, vengeance driven demon.

Now, it seemed, that was all they were or would ever be.

Mary’s shock faded into distress. “Effie, I couldn’t have foreseen -”

“I’m positive that explains John’s behaviour in hospital,” Effie expanded, her cold heart cracking, breaking against the heat of her blood. Mary, by comparison, looked rather pale.

“After this happened, after my run on Broadway … I returned to London and found that war had ruined everything that had once been good about Ban and that peace was only making him worse. I am so, so sorry if anything I said in anger that eventually lead to John and Edmund suffering the same on some psychologist’s couch-”

“Nothing is your fault – that was years before!” Effie said when she realised her neighbour was on the verge of tears. “And honestly? What were the chances John would take a job overseas and Edmund would decide that no doctoral programme on offer in Britain was quite elite enough for him?”

“Um …”

“Disregarding that last statement,” Effie shook her head to readjust, “you know what I thought, afterwards, after John had left and you all were with me in my hospital room? Despite what I lost, I have the family I had always wanted. I always had people to love and care for me. And to think now that this man André exploited the pain of its members for personal gain! I could, why - _I could well kill him!_ ”

“And you are worried that Ban, John, Edmund, Ellie, or anyone else emotionally involved just might,” Mary tried.

“Ban sent me John André’s research proposal asking what he should do. I have thought about printing it, but if I run this your ex would most certainly be fired and would most probably go to prison for the leak. If I stay silent, is that blood on my hands if the US Military goes on to employ it and more personal lives are destroyed?”

“Again, he should never have put this on you. He was probably just excited with his finding – desperate, maybe, to find his way back into Ellie’s good graces. I know the two haven’t much spoken since … well since we all were given reason enough to distance ourselves.”

“There is something else. Benedict Arnold was the senate contact for the funding that enabled the project. Edmund was arrested last Wednesday in connection to his disappearance -”

“NO! I knew you suspected John, but Edmund?”

“John was taken in on Sunday. Both have been released -in part due to our social media efforts - but I worry they are still under suspicion. I haven’t been able to reach Ban since Sunday evening and -”

“Marie spoke to him yesterday morning,” Mary dismissed. “You can worry about him when he goes a full day without trying to spare his children from the consequences of their actions. He told her something about Bertolt Brecht, so from that I imagine he has been in friendly and constructive contact with John -”

“I think he has been trying to protect them, in his way … but I am worried about what you said earlier, about it not being entirely altruistic.”

“I meant that only in relation to -”

“Listen. First, Ban told Ellie about Edmund’s arrest, saying that he planned to pin Arnold’s murder on a Muslim who had once served under him. She asked DI Ferguson to intervene, creating a short-lived international incident that lead to Ban being placed under house arrest at the British embassy, giving him time to charm the ambassador. At the same time as some FBI SWAT team was on the hunt for this former American officer, John was arrested. Edmund tried to negotiate with Cornwallis to get his medical records released to DI Tallmadge who is leading the Arnold investigation – thinking it would lead Tallmadge to seek out André instead, but Ban placed a hold on them and is now questioning if it was the right thing to do. He too has reason the believe that Tallmadge is ultimately after the doctor, and that Edmund’s records would lead to at least a search warrant – but, given what he thinks he sees about the reality of Edmund’s heart condition after examining my father’s autopsy report -”

“It would be disastrous for business and given that the Hewletts’ contracts in Liverpool are due to expire his city would certainly feel the hit.”

“I don’t think it is that. Not exclusively, anyway. I don’t think that Ban would bring my father up unless he had plans to make good on an oath – which I certainly never asked for! – promising to avenge his death.”

“Yeah, well Ban says a lot of shit when he is upset,” Mary shrugged. “I wouldn’t think too terribly much on it. Have you talked to Ellie about any of this? She’ll back me up. As would … literally anyone who has ever met the lad.”

“No, and I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Mary this … you can’t say this to anyone, anyone at all.”

“I promise.”

“I can’t talk to Ellie right now, because this can’t all be coincidence. Ban was the first of us to read André’s proposal and he keeps finding ways of creating a distraction right when John and Edmund need one most. His intelligence … it is all intuitive, you know? It's … I think he suspects them to have together murdered Benedict Arnold. Because I do, too,” she confessed. “I think this Dr André turned the man I love and my best friend’s older brother into cold murdering bastards and I am bloody terrified.”

She felt Mary Robinson’s arms fall around her and bring her into a tight embrace, one that she returned out of desperation. “I can’t stand the thought of what has happened to John,” Effie sobbed. “I’ve never been able to accept that we were over, but how can we ever be after what has been done to him – _after what he has done to other people?_ I didn’t recognise him – I didn’t recognise him and I should have after all that we shared.”

They sat like this for what felt a long while, until both of their faces were soaked and their tear ducts were dammed up from exhaustion. Effie sought comfort in her company, sought to return what felt a strange favour until a ringing mobile pulled Mary away. “Do you want me to get that?” she asked, seeing Ellie’s face on the caller ID.

“No. I have been avoiding my problems for far too long as it is,” Effie said before answering the device on speaker with “Where the hell are you?” in lieu of a greeting.

>> _Darling, you would not believe me if I told you, but that isn’t the story I’ve called to relay._ << Elanor Hewlett seemed to tease.

Effie swallowed. “Listen, Ellie, we really need to talk. So much has happened since you left and … I miss you. I need you to come home. Please. We have to talk. But we have to talk in person.”

>> _I’m under investigation for corporate fraud based on a statement my brother gave the fuzz. I’m in Scotland because I can’t leave Scotland. I would invite you up, but first I need you at a computer because I just got off the phone with The Committee Chairman and Ben Tallmadge is about to have the most eventful day of his career._ <<

Feeling that her own day was about to become much longer than it need be, Effie opened a blank Word document. “Tell me a story, Ellie Hew.”

>> _In approximately fifteen minutes Paulo Genovese is going to walk into the Manhattan police station, refusing to speak to anyone but DI Tallmadge with whom he has been at war for years._ <<

 

* * *

 

Edmund Hewlett detested tardiness. Had one of his students given him the same excuse he had provided Hayden’s HR department for his absence, he quite likely would have advised them to drop the course. Higher maths, he would have told them, required a great deal of concentration and commitment.

The same could be said of friendship, as the past week had shown.

DI Tallmadge rang him on Monday afternoon requesting that he return to the station to answer a few questions about his statement. As he was under inquiry rather than arrest, Hewlett had been able to bide time within reason, returning to work from his ungratifying low-cholesterol lunch with the explanation that he would need to take the following morning off. The police, he explained to new employer, hoped he might identify the man who had assaulted him out of a line up, having earlier lied about his bruising and ‘broken’ ankle. Seeing Mary that morning as she struggled with a cast through the kitchen, insisting on helping Aberdeen prepare a proper breakfast despite all of the room’s protests for her to sit down, Hewlett had had the forethought to cover the monitor with a leg brace left in his possession from an earlier sport injury of his own. The contusions and crutches purchased him just enough sympathy with HR to allow for an excused leave of absence so early in his employment. Beaten and broken by the surprising ease with which he had come to find himself able to lie, Hewlett limped into interrogation, not as an assault victim, but as a suspect.

“Clever,” the sergeant to whom he had spoken two nights prior commented on his props. Tallmadge was silent, smiling lightly in such a way that caused Hewlett to question his calculations. He had driven to the station in Anna’s sedan, the same borrowed vehicle that had half-slain the senator the Tuesday prior. This realization had forced him to park a block away, not that he risk the car being made evidence, as much for practical reasons as protectionary ones. Public transport from Setauket to New York City would take two and a half hours, meaning he would need to rise at five o’clock in the morning to make it to the planetarium on time – something that would have proven difficult under any circumstance, fully impossible after two months spent succumb to depression, seldom dragging himself out from under his sheets before ten. 

Paranoia, which had plagued Hewlett for the whole of his life, had finally gotten the better of him if Tallmadge’s smirk and the sergeant’s statement were to serve as an indicator. He had considered stripping himself of the brace and abandoning his crutches to the back seat before entering the station, but - worried that someone from work would drive past and see his lie for what it was- he had decided to carry on his act of being crippled. Now, Ben Tallmadge knew him to be capable of constructing an alibi.

“If Nancy Grace and the entire female population of your city are to be believed, you were once in a similar position, Inspector,” Hewlett said curtly. “I just took a new job and certainly do not wish my colleagues to know that I am a murder suspect.”

“I didn’t have a choice in the matter,” Tallmadge replied, neither phased nor particularly interested. “Not,” he shifted sharply, “that it would have occurred to me to try to disguise a monitoring device had I given the internal police any ground to insist upon my wearing one. Take a seat, Mr Hewlett. This might take a while.”

“I came of my own free will,” Hewlett protested. “I told your sergeant everything about the match -”

“If you mean to insinuate that you’ll leave unless I charge you, I might remind you, Mr Hewlett, that you just now referred to yourself as a ‘murder suspect’. My department has been treating Senator Arnold’s disappearance as a missing person case. Any reason why we might want to reclassify the parameters of our investigation?” Tallmadge asked. “Take a seat, Mr Hewlett – either there or in a holding cell. It makes little difference to me.”

Hewlett took a deep breath, hating his upbringing as he relaxed into the opposite chair insofar as he would ever be able. His posture was rigidly straight. At thirty-five, he could still feel every slap his shoulders had ever received for slouching. He pictured how Simcoe might have looked by way of comparison – casual, relaxed, feet likely crossed up on the table to demonstrate complete disregard for his captors. He would have likely looked as though he had nothing to hide. Realistically, all of Bye Week, Middle County FC and everyone else who had sat in this chamber to answer a simple series of questions had done so with a demeanour that evaded Hewlett completely. Even knowing it was in his best interest, he could not so much as bring his back to touch that of the chair. It was too common. Tallmadge, he saw, noted this deficit.

“You seem nervous, Mr Hewlett,” he remarked.

The suspect said nothing in reply. What good, he wondered, would it do for him to explain the environment in which he had been raised? Tallmadge took a few pages from the manila folder he had in front of him. It was thinner, Hewlett saw, than the one containing the files the NYPD either had or had not received from DI Ferguson, formally of Glasgow. “You shouldn’t be,” Tallmadge said. “I guarantee that you have been here before. Likely, quite often at that. Here,” he said returning to Hewlett the statement he had written on Sunday. “Let’s talk for a moment, if we may, about spelling and syntax.”

“What is this?” Hewlett demanded, seeing a copy his sworn statement covered in red ink.

“English is a bastard language” Tallmadge told him. “It began its existence as an Anglo-Friesian dialect brought to Britain by Germanic settlers in the fifth century with some Scandinavian influences entering by the eight. Many Norman and French words then entered the lexicon, if you will, with the Conquest – Greek, Latin, Dutch, German, French et cetera emerging in the vocabular of the Renaissance. I read history at Yale, you see. Many Middle English documents that survive to this day seem to have by most standards highly irregular spellings. Not by your own judgement, I’m guessing. No Mr Hewlett, your write … I don’t even want to say phonetically -”

“Then please, by all means, say what you mean to,” Hewlett spat. “I have a minor learning disability. Dyslexia has plagued me my entire life. I’m on a 504 at Columbia, this is why,” he gestured to the corrected paper. “If you mean to humiliate me -”

“I don’t,” the inspector tried to assure him, raising his hands as though to offer an olive branch if not the white flag of surrender. “I just have a few questions, that is all.”

“No,” Hewlett said as he flipped thought the paper he had not expected to find so rigorously noted. “It seems you understood me despite my mistakes. Your man Baker -”

A single loud knock served to stop him midsentence. Tallmadge turned around, standing when he greeted the gruff looking man as ‘chief’. The sergeant followed suit, relaxing when the man in the doorway gestured for her to be seated.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the elderly, decorated officer said. “Paulo Genovese just walked in off the street on his own accord with what he states is evidence against The Commission and is refusing to speak to anyone but you, Inspector Tallmadge.”

“Understood,” the inspector nodded, straightening, Hewlett noticed, ever so slightly with what he imagined to be nerves. He knew the name of the unexpected witness as that belonging to an ambitious underboss in one of New York’s Five Families and felt the hand of his own.

 

* * *

 

The dossier had been delivered an hour earlier. It contained two large bound documents filled with the names and addresses of everyone whose prescription Oxycodone was due to run out in a dominion he considered his own. A pink Post-It Note on the first read: ‘ _To borrow from your own lexicon, I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse – call me!_ ❤’

Neither name nor number accompanied the package, but it contained new iPhone with a single set of digits preprogramed under pseudonym Paulo well knew, one he had already guessed at from the Edinburgh postage stamp.

“Enyo,” he greeted his Scottish counterpart when she answered on the first ring. “You realise we only say things like that in the movies.”

“ _The offer still stands_ ,” she seemed to purr. “ _Though, truth be told, you’re late, Mr Genovese. I was expecting you to ring me last week._ ”

“Blame it on the post,” Paulo replied. “I only just got your package.”

“ _Indeed. It has been a bit hectic in New York, I’d imagine. Still, we had an understanding, you, I - and the commission I expect you hope to soon chair. You’ve not abided by your end of it_ ,” she warned, “ _and yet … well, let’s for now leave things at: I’ll let you make it up to me. I sent you two files, the first of which you are going to hand deliver to Inspector Benjamin Tallmadge of the NYPD._ ”

“Haven’t they told you, love? Tallmadge isn’t on the case anymore. There is a big to-do with a certain missing senator … or is the British press of preoccupied with your brother’s coming nuptials -”

“ _And here I thought you all too keen to leave my brother out of it,”_ she taunted before tapering her tongue into a blade within the same breath. _“We had a deal, Mr Genovese. You have not held up your end of the bargain which I see as an excuse to overstep myself. I sent you a print out of a transaction made between Thomas Jefferson of Pfizer and Frank Cali of the Gambino crime family. I need you to take the receipt, contained on the first page of the smaller file - along with the whole of the rest of its contents - to DI Tallmadge. It will give him grounds to arrest Jefferson and allow you to eliminate your internal competition -_ ”

“I don’t make deals with coppers,” Paulo replied flatly.

“ _Which is why you still take orders at … how old are you now, Paulo – fifty?_ ” Enyo said sharply. “ _You know, when I was a little girl I was told by a … business associate that we often have more in common with our enemies than we do with our friends. Of course, the man was referring to a sport rivalry – but it always stayed with me and I find it to be … particularly fitting to your situation. Your enemies, my dear, are masking themselves as allies to take advantage of your family’s pathetic adherence to Omertà._

 _The second file is for you to use as you see fit. It contains information about individuals forced into chemical dependency by a broken pharmaceutical system for most of your territory. You needn’t tell Talmadge about its existence, but if you don’t take advantage, Franky Boy surely will if he hasn’t already,”_ she paused. _“Your lack of central leadership tells me your family can’t afford a war, not against your arch-rivals whom you now know to have direct ties to Big Pharma … and surely, not with me, my friend._ ”

There were all of five women in the world who truly intimidated Paulo Genovese: his wife, his mistress, the district attorney, and the two involved in drug trafficking who simultaneously enjoyed strong ties to their respective militaries. The ‘liberator of the liberator’ was, thankfully, far away in South America; the ‘princess of the blood’, on the other hand, seemed ready to call in the cavalry. He tried to stall. Eleanor Hewlett, he knew, had not earned that particular distinction due to her place on some line of succession. Paulo looked around to make sure he was alone. He lowered his voice. “You are asking me to give Tallmadge -”

“ _All the evidence he needs to arrest a man not directly related to mafia activity_ ,” she calmly cut him off. “ _I’m asking for a distraction. Tallmadge has been trying to get to Jefferson for years. I’m only asking that you provide the good inspector with all the excuse he needs to put this down for good.”_

“I didn’t realise you were an expect in New York’s most tenacious cop.”

“ _I wasn’t until he arrested my brother last week,_ ” Enyo said snidely. “ _Family is as important to me as it is to you, Paulo. You’ll go to Tallmadge, or I’ll come to you. Your choice. Your so-said code has already been compromised, and I am giving you a chance to make amends - under very generous terms, I might add. That said, the caution I’m about to give is admittedly profuse, but whereas you speak in terms of ‘associates’ I can call upon an army. Don’t give me more reason than I have to come to your city, for if made to, I shan’t come alone. Uphold your part of the agreement we share by delivering Jefferson to Talmadge as it were and do what you want with the rest. Ring me when it has been done. Same number, from the same phone. It is encrypted, the only way you can reach me._ ”

“Do none of the others work anymore?”

“ _Not for you, Paulo – ciao!_ ” she laughed.

“Cheers,” he replied to a dead line.

Genovese dressed himself slowly in a suit he knew he wore well, unable to face the coward he feared he would find in the mirror.

An hour later, he walked into the precinct with information surrounding a drug deal of which he had not been part in hopes of loosening the noose negligence had hung around his neck.

 

* * *

 

“Go,” the sergeant urged her boss who glanced anxiously between she and the suspect. “I’ve got this,” she smiled at Hewlett. He hated her casual confidence, her too-focused stare that stung nearly as much as Tallmadge’s manic adherence to proper formatting. Hewlett glanced down at the statement he had written, the words dancing when he looked too long, causing him to feel slightly dizzy with their waltz.

Tallmadge excused himself, shooting Hewlett another hard look of suspicion before exiting the interrogation room. The suspect glared back, embarrassed at the ease with which his ego was wounded.

“Sergeant Yil…” he attempted, still unable to recall her surname beyond the first syllable.

“Maz. _Yilmaz._ Not good with names either, are we?”

“I ah … you must realise, most of the people I have ever known have but a distinct few,” Hewlett tried to excuse his faux pas. He was still want to call her ‘yildiz’ – the single word of Turkish he felt confident in pronouncing.

“Are we speaking of Windsors and Bernadottes or Johns and Roberts?” Yilmaz chimed.

“Ah … both, I suppose, if we are also speaking geographically.”

“But you knew John Graves Simcoe back in England, is that correct?”

“Yes?” Hewlett squinted.

“You say that as though you are unsure.”

“I don’t understand why I am being asked to repeat it,” he answered honestly.

“I’ll come to that in a minute. Let’s talk about your spelling though – it is something of an interest of mine. An obsession, if you will. My mother is mute, well, that is, where my father, sisters and I understand her perfectly – you wouldn’t. The Turkish authorities removed her tongue when she was a young woman – probably unflinching as the cut it from her mouth to strike terror into the hearts of those knowing a word of the Kurdish language. In Diyarbakir,” she spat as those this should mean something, “Or Amed, as I’ve also heard it referred.”

She gestured all the while, perhaps, Hewlett thought, behaviour she unconsciously mirrored from the woman whose voice had been taken. Yilmaz spoke casually, he noted, as though this was a story she had had to relay on many an occasion. He could not help but wonder in his heightened discomfort if this was an appropriate venue for it.

“Why are you telling me this? Only a demon could enact the scenario you've recounted.”

“A demon? No, Mr Hewlett. A government decree that followed the military coup of 1980. My parents first met in hospital. My father was a nurse – he still is. Married my mum then and there, knowing that she would get better treatment in America where he was set to move within the month. She was a teacher in Turkey, my mother. Cleans homes on the Upper East Side now what with,” Yilmaz indicated to her lips. “Perfect English though, at least in written form. It would have to be when I think on it, being her only means of communication;” she paused. “If I came home with a paper that looked like yours she would have made me copy my corrected individual mistakes five times each before rewriting the paper in full until my fingers blead. To this day I’m a little fearful texting her, even with spell check, autocorrect and the like. I only bring this up because it gives me cause to wonder a bit about the texts you have been exchanging with Simcoe of late.”

“You are asking if I went through something similar at his insistence?” Hewlett shook his head. Leave it to Simcoe to voice every fault he found to anyone who would listen. “My dear, it would not have made a difference if I had.”

“His spelling is perfect,” Yilmaz seemed to challenge.

“He is a poet of some renown back in Britain. You might expect as much.”

“But not from you.”

“No.”

“Except,” she elongated, opening a file she was not quick to share. “Oh – this is interesting. Hm. It begs almost the same question,” she frowned. “I took you for a Klopptimist.”

“I … am I suppose?”

“Still the you can win the league?”

“Mathematically.”

“And Europe?”

“Of course.”

“Just not away at Palace?”

“We beat the Eagles with ten men at the weekend,” Hewlett frowned.

“That come as a surprise?” Yilmaz inquired with an intent Hewlett struggled to place.

“Not to anyone who follows football,” he scoffed.

“You like shooting yourself in the own foot, don’t you?” she smiled.

“In terms of unnecessary fouls or -”

“No, you as a person, Mr Hewlett,” she clarified, “not you as a supporter of a franchise. See, for a moment I might have been able to let it slide but, you’ll see here – in a transcript of a recent WhatsApp exchange between you and John Simcoe – that you were absolutely adamant that your side would lose at the weekend. Since I know you have some trouble with it and the course of my family history has in contrast made me an expert, I’ll help you out,” she pointed to the print out she laid before him, “there are no spelling errors in the messages you sent Simcoe in rapid succession. Here, just as a point of comparison, this here is a transcript of a text exchange you had with your future mother in law the same morning. Slower, you’ll note, and with far more errors that elapsed autocorrect – some of which my boss even called you out on.”

Tallmadge had marked his mistakes on this copy as well. Hewlett swallowed, remembering Mrs Smith asking him if he was drunk Sunday morning in the midst of trying to negotiate space for even more of Anna’s shoes in the sedan.

“Mr Hewlett, I am going to make an assumption and you can correct me if you wish – but you aren’t texting Mr Simcoe at all, are you?”

“I, ah -”

“Rather, he is texting himself from your phone, that, or given the speed of the exchange and the fact that the time stamps on some of these show that you were conversing with Ms Smith at precisely the same time – good ol’ John Graves has set up some kind of algorithm to do the texting for him. Being that you are still in the _‘this is our year’_ phase of what your old friend Banastre Tarleton calls ‘the red mentality’, I’m given to think that none of this has anything to do with footy at all. So … are you curious as to which parts of the code I’ve been able to crack?” she winked. “This here, from last Thursday, is about purchasing property in Setauket – perhaps to make your unsuccessful bid on DeJong’s look less conspicuous.”

She knew nothing. Hewlett did not bother reading the text she had surely misinterpreted. “The tavern is the only property in Setauket I have any interest in holding,” he responded in all honesty.

“Well, you might have been a bit more forthright in telling Simcoe as much,” Yilmaz shrugged. “As things stand, you and a few dozen other shareholders own more than half the town, much of which was purchased from a London real estate mogul whom I believe you also went to school with – Danny Wessex?”

“Yea. I know Danny,” Hewlett blinked. He had not heard the name in years, had not seen the lad in longer. He had received an invitation to his wedding, more out of protocol than any friendship they had shared on York’s playing fields. He shook his head. “This is honestly the first I’ve heard anything about a landgrab in Setauket though.”

“He sold you land he had bought a few months prior for six times what he paid,” Yilmaz informed him. “I don’t entirely take you for a fool, Mr Hewlett, so I did some digging and discovered that the world might literally be as small as the town you now call home. Check the Daily Mail this morning?”

“No.”

“Surprised Anna hasn’t called you about it yet.”

“Not her cup of tea either.”

“Not even when she is in a sport bra on page six?”

The sergeant pulled out her mobile to show him a picture of teenage Anna exchanging her national colours for the one’s Danny’s wife Charlotte wore under her maiden name. “Gwillim doesn’t seem to care to cite her sources, so I had to do my own digging on this one and found that your fiancée gave up the game in any professional capacity after ending Mrs Wessex’ to injury. Now, I thought Danny’s gouging might have been revenge for that particular incident, but the history is older, isn’t it?”

Hewlett blinked again. “Anna mentioned once that she played two matches for the Under-21 US Women’s National Team … but I, no. No, I didn’t – and I doubt, _highly_ , Sergeant Yilmaz, that anyone – much less Danny Wessex of all people would think to hurt Anna through me.”

“Would Simcoe though?” she pried.

Hewlett felt his fists clench and his throat contract.

 

* * *

 

“I’ve been told there was a death on the force,” the Sicilian greeted in a slow, gruff voice. “My condolences.”

“You didn’t come here for our world-famous coffee, Mr Genovese,” DI Ben Tallmadge stated, still standing. The meeting was not being held in a standard interrogation room. Rather, the two were in Ben’s office, Genovese having made himself comfortable in a chair facing the desk. Ben took the one beside it after some deliberation he hoped was no apparent in his movement. He did not want to glance over a photograph of Nate to meet the eyes of one of the most notorious murderers in the city, a leader in the war that had stolen his first love away from him.

“No,” the mobster agreed. “I came to put this in your capable hands.” He reached for something under the wool coat he had folded on his lap. Occupational instinct placed Ben’s hand on his holster, aware though he was that the unofficial head of the largest of the Five Families was unlikely to open fire himself, especially within the station’s walls. Still, he sighed in relief when the man handed over a bound dossier.

“How did you come to obtain this?” Ben asked as he surveyed the document.

“A mutual friend. I am afraid that is all I can say.”

Knowing that the mafia had an honour code that Paulo Genovese felt particularly bound to, Ben stated his concern, “It still begs the question why you are surrendering it to me.”

“The enemy of my enemy,” the made-man began to allude. Ben did not appreciate the implication.

“We are not friends, Mr Genovese. And it is not my case anymore.”

“We are more alike than you may assume, Ben. I have no intention of surrendering my place on The Committee to this, as I am all but certain that you have no desire to abandon your own ambitions to the politics of convenience. Look at the last page,” he instructed.

“There seems to be quite a bit missing,” Ben commented as he flipped though, noting a mis-numeration. 

“It is all I was given,” the Sicilian swore.

“All you were given or all you are giving me?”  

“Does it make a difference? Jefferson and Cali are set to meet at the docks in an hour. I trust the source of this information as I trust that you -”

“What are you asking in exchange?” Ben interrupted. He did not have time to organize a proper invasion, he would have less after disobeying a direct order to negotiate terms for a turncoat. Genovese took his time considering, time which felt slower as Ben’s pulse grew to match pace with the seconds ticking away on the clock on his back wall. He knew this could well be a trap, but in the event that it was not, he would be fated to curse caution for the rest of his life. It seemed likely that he would never be handed another opportunity like this; aside from the reasons that owed themselves to logic, there were rumours that Jefferson planned to relocate to Paris permanently, and Cali appeared so rarely in public that it made little difference if he was in New York or not.

It would make an enormous difference to the city, however, if the NYPD could stop an illegal shipment of prescription Oxycodone from being peddled on its streets.

Ben owed that much to Nate.

He owed it to himself, as well.

“Your cooperation … and silence,” Genovese answered at long last.

“You let me handle this on my own,” the detective warned.

“What purpose would it serve me to send my associates anywhere I know you to be mounting your forces. Of course – the window is limited. If you don’t want to take it, I could always make a call.”

It would take too long, Ben knew, if he did this by the book. Excusing himself from the conversation, he gathered most of his team together. There was little time for tactics. He told his men to put their Kevlar on and prepare to follow his lead.

After sticking his head back into the room where Hewlett was being detained and telling Yilmaz she was in charge of the Arnold case until the time of his return, making no mention to his second as to where he was headed, DI Ben Tallmadge departed the station in an unmarked car that stank of sin. Putting on his siren as he sped through the streets, he was called back by the sound and the stale air to Saturday night when he was a passenger; when Caleb Brewster, who knew the backways far better than he himself could ever hope to, had whisked him back to his flat – his gorgeous eyes focused on the road whilst Ben fiddled awkwardly with his first attempt at fellatio in years. He remembered how it felt to be in Caleb’s arms, the euphoria and agony of being with a man who was not DS Hale. Ben felt as though he betrayed his first love - that he betrayed equally a near stranger whom he had no business bringing back to the apartment he once shared with his partner.

The problem, he now saw, was that he had never left the pew in his father’s church. Ben Tallmadge knew that he was in too many ways still at his boyfriend’s funeral. He had to bury Nate on his own. He had only today to do it. He had to focus.

When he pulled up to the river’s edge minutes after letting his longing and sorrow break into steadfast resolve, he quickly arranged his troops around the the designated meeting place only to find the two criminals in question were already inside, each of them flanked by more men than the inspector had anticipated from the email exchange. He raised his service weapon. Thomas Jefferson had started the city’s drug problem. Frank Cali had given the order that had killed Nate in the line of service. He took aim, giving an order for his man to follow suit, firing off but a single a round before moving in to storm the premises.

One way or another, he swore, this would end here and now.

 

* * *

 

The previous Wednesday, Edmund Hewlett had made what now seemed the fatal error of informing the police about two-hundred jobs he had been unable to save, more because his father’s sudden, stern disapproval that bordered on absolute dismay remained for him - half a lifetime later - the most remarkable detail of the entirety of his short, sordid career in business than out of any strategic necessity.

He had begun relaying this narrative as a whole in hopes of distracting from Simcoe’s involvement in his current scheme, but it seemed that for all of his old friend’s initial anger, John Graves had been playing him from another angle all the while. At least, this was the police seemed to believe.

Despite his own growing mistrust, Hewlett found himself fighting the urge to laugh.

Ferguson was a quality detective, albeit one trapped by politics in a rank likely far lower than that which he was due, thanks to his brief entanglement with Simcoe, Hewlett and their murderous horse. He was not surprised that his fellow Scotsman had followed up on this lead, though it came as a shock that there he had found a trail at all.

Perhaps he had been naïve in this respect, but having left himself with no possibility of retreat, Hewlett marched forward to a battle he had not anticipated necessary to fight. For now, this took the form of sitting vis-à-vis Sergeant Yilmaz as she relayed Inspector Ferguson’s findings. Hewlett was only half listening as he tried to anticipate what his next move might be were he to reach the clearing to indeed find Simcoe on the other side, having mounted his considerable forces in opposition.

Per the sergeant whose quick reading and rigorous adherence to proper spelling apparently owed themselves to the fact that her mother was missing her oral organ, as the result of Edmund’s finding no feasible solution that would allow for business to continue, an office in Liverpool had needed to be closed. Twenty-one years later, Hewlett found he could not any more feign the sorrow his father had once demanded of him. He had given up the entirety of his considerable inheritance to salvage as much as he could under the market conditions of the era. He had saved his family’s wealth, honour and reputation. He said nothing to this effect. It seemed, in light of what Ferguson had been able to uncover, an altogether moot point.

“The closing of this division caused then-mayor John Tarleton to make veiled threats, which your father then countered by stating that he had incriminating documents of his own that would cost the mayor his party’s nomination if exposed. I can’t open the attachment. Do you know anything about what your Lord father was referring to?”

“No,” Hewlett answered honestly. “I was _fourteen_. I don’t even know or remember what Tarleton was being nominated for.”

“Prime Minster.”

“Glad that didn’t work out then,” he muttered.

“Tarleton seems to have immediately resigned from the race on his own accord. In what appears to be – according to Ferguson’s findings - the final series of exchanges between the two men, he then made the bold move to request that Eleanor and Eugene be sent to live in his household, attaching what may have well been another threat of sorts.”

“Or perhaps he was simply seeking prestige,” Edmund guessed. Yilmaz said nothing, reading on to inform him that which he already knew - the mayor was denied this honourable expansion of his already enormous family. Hewlett Sr. suggested in his refusal that his former friend well knew the fate that awaited those who moved to threaten their most noble of names. Tarleton replied to this with only, as Yilmaz relayed, ‘ _someday your children will grow up, and good luck to you and your Lady wife when they do._ ’

“It seems the two never again spoke directly with one another,” she remarked.

“Sometimes partnerships fall apart.”

“I suppose that is something you know quite a bit about, Mr Hewlett.”

“I’m less of an expert than you credit me as being,” he smiled. He knew what she was trying to do. Even if her assumptions were correct, he was determined not to let himself be captured, at least not in a trap he had unknowingly laid for himself in misplaced trust.

Though Edmund Hewlett disagreed with his father on a great many things, he grew increasingly determined as the detective spoke to deliver upon the promise to bring destruction upon all of those who threatened his name, especially as Anna would soon share it. He had told Simcoe about the market scheme Aberdeen had gathered from the gist of Lafayette’s loud telephone conversation with the Moussed in hopes of raising half a million with which to purchase the bar in which his fiancée worked, thereby fulfilling the fondest wish of the woman he loved. The funds had been too easily secured. Tallmadge and his team seemed to know nothing of the information Hewlett had happen upon, having only half cracked the code – and that, he grinded his teeth together - as a result of Simcoe’s lack of care; not taking into account the various spelling mistakes that he so often mocked while programming his algorithm, not so much as attempting to allow the information sent from Hewlett’s number to otherwise speak as he would in any sense.

Perhaps, this had been Simcoe’s intent all along.

On the same night Hewlett made his confession, Simcoe had been in communication with Banastre Tarleton who had advised him to purchase more property in Setauket, warning him that Anna Strong would be on the cover of the Daily Mail the following morning wearing a bewildered expression in front of the bar where Senator Arnold was reported to have last been seen. It could well be, as Yilmaz laid out, that Elizabeth Gwillim had tipped him off to this, that Tarleton had somehow over the distance of a decade recognised the face of a girl who had accidently ended his older sister’s footballing career by fouling her in a friendly and had decided, with the help of his former roommate, to take retribution in money if blood was not an available option.

It could, however, be mere coincidence that the man who the colonel now seemed to be claiming once saved his life disappeared in a town where the Wessex’ just happened to own property (as, Hewlett noted to himself, they did all over what had once been the British Empire.) Danny, Charlotte -and the whole of her extended family, likely wanted to sell before value plummeted, and, perhaps, had given Simcoe the chance to create a scenario that might force Hewlett to confess to some greater guilt in the process of recouping their initial investment. Hewlett wondered how on earth Simcoe found the ways and means to organize all of this with everything else he had on his plate whilst questioning how strong his internal enemies’ shared motive truly was. If he was right, their alliance was weak at best and could thus be easily undone.

As he now saw it, Simcoe had denied Mary’s amorous advances thinking that Anna would soon be his. He himself would soon be in prison by what he supposed had been his sometimes-friend’s estimation, leaving Simcoe thus in complete control of Setauket proper. The situation that lead to his engagement to Anna likely had the banker convinced that the woman they both loved was nothing more than an opportunist who would follow her ‘heart’ to him when she saw she had no other options.

How very mistaken he was.

Simcoe had again made a miscalculation about him - and with Anna now a factor in the same equation - Hewlett was determined to make the error prove fatal.

Bitter was he was at the reality of his ankle monitor, it proved a blessing in disguise. Having fallen into the trap that Tallmadge laid in the evidence Ferguson had gather against them both as younger men, Hewlett had learned how the Scottish inspector had come on his then-winning tactic. Again, he fought the urge to smile at the absurdity of it all. Everton considered itself Liverpool’s rival and the fool Banastre had always placed his bets on the wrong side. The colonel very likely saw their current situation, as Hewlett imagined based on what he had been told on Sunday, in the same way he had seen the reality of their past arrest – something to be exploited for the purpose of indemnification.

Hewlett, by contrast, saw through them all. He needed only to deny it here for his own survival.

“I didn’t know anything about the land grab in Setauket!” he exclaimed. “Nothing! And John, to my knowledge, knows nothing about any business my father ever did with the former Mayor of Liverpool!”

“But you trust him?”

“To handle my finances?” he scoffed. “He is the best in the field.”

“When he tells you that he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Benedict Arnold?” Yilmaz posed. This threw him, but only slightly. Her strategy, he saw, remained the same as it had been on Sunday evening. Having forced doubt upon him, she hoped she could convince him to divide his forces from those Simcoe had pre-placed in order to weaken the strength of their shaky alliance, the same as Ferguson had done years before.

Her mistake had been in thinking he did not take note of all of her cards when she briefly shown her hand.

“Yes! Bloody hell! Yes!” Hewlett insisted. He would deal with John in his own time. The demon would surely be his own undoing, but if Hewlett admitted to what he knew now during the course of this interrogation, too many people he cared about would be dragged into the same hell: his beloved Anna, Mary Woodhull, Jordan Akinbode and Aberdeen Declesias, all of whom, like himself, were only in this situation because of the same misguided sense of loyalty.

Hewlett knew himself to process the unenviable fortune of being rather good at breaking such ties, something that would here again prove beneficial to him. He had achieved, after all, only the most limited contact to the blood relatives who had evidently been set on his demise. He had survived every assassination attempt to date. Let Simcoe do his absolute worst, he thought to himself. He would be able to defeat him in the end and save the others as well, allowing them all to profit from whatever misfortune should soon come to befall his most cherished enemy.

“I believe you,” Yilmaz said.

“You … you do?” Hewlett stuttered in response.

“For now. What was it Banastre said to DI Ferguson? ‘ _Liverpool fans are defensive to the point of denial about their side until someone truly gets the better of them?_ ’ - that assessment nearly convicted you before. And these aren’t the only risky bets John Graves Simcoe has made with your money, are they? I haven’t entirely figured out the rest of the ‘league table,’ focused in on your team - so to speak, as I was, but I think this is a ploy -”

The door swung open without the curtsey of a knock.

“This interview is finished,” the Frenchman whom Hewlett had spied upon declared as he rushed in without awaiting invitation.

“This isn’t your case,” Yilmaz responded without bothering to rise in greeting.

“I’ll see that you are taken off it completely if you don’t immediately surrender this room,” a stern, steady voice came from around the corner. Within seconds, a man dressed in full military regalia appeared unsmiling before them. Yilmaz took to her feet immediately. Hewlett rose as well, recognising the man who now made their company from the evening news.

“Sit,” George Washington told him. Hewlett obeyed.

“I trust your judgement,” the American Defence Secretary said to his foreign liaison. Hewlett watched Yilmaz leave in Washington’s company with the feeling that he would have gotten better terms had he confessed to her when he had been given the chance to do so.

“Monsieur ‘Ewlett,” Lafayette greeted. “It seems we meet once more.”

 

* * *

 

Ben Tallmadge drove back to the station the long way around, taking in the day’s victory in the silence of his car. It had not been as he had so long anticipated despite living up to his expectations in every conceivable fashion.

Having played with a hundred like scenarios in his fantasy over the course of the past six years, it was as though he had been as distant from any of the actual action as he would have been had the morning’s events only transpired in his inactive mind. Ben had been deaf to the exchanged fire, moving through the dead zone as though he would in any routine operation.

His victory did not feel hallow, though it did not feel cathartic.

It felt, he realized, like another day at the office.

After six years of metaphorically sitting on a church pew whilst his father read the eulogy of the man he had loved, feeling the guilt and stain of sin in the shadow of the cross, Ben Tallmadge finally felt as though he had been able to go to work and do his job. He felt that things had returned to normal.

He pulled into a carpark by the Hudson, letting the wind cascade through his loosened hair as he stopped to watch the small waves on the water’s surface. For a time, he did not think anything but instead let himself feel. He felt hope fill the void dread had left in his heart. He felt the chill of the air on his cheeks, the occasional light sting of his long hair as it whipped against his face with each arctic gush. Buying himself a coffee from a foot truck, he countered the coming storm with a bit of bitter warmth. He was free. He had, in turn, liberated his city from mafia’s stronghold, having undone an alliance between the Five Families and the pharmaceutical industry.

By the time this fully hit him, it had begun to drizzle.

Ben, who suddenly felt glad enough to sing, simply stood, watching the water gather itself into ripples and small waves until it broke against its own weight. There was a beauty to it which he had too long denied himself. He could well have spent the entire day at the river, in the rain, in the comfort of the coffee he could no longer get back at the station and in the realization that every drop of precipitation forming puddles in the gravel would soon bring the world closer to its coming spring.

He resolved to visit his parents at Easter, to voice a silence that he had let shame him for years. He deserved better than what he had allotted himself as of late.

Ben reached into his pocket for his phone, intent on making a call he had been anxiously avoiding.

A text from DS Yilmaz told him, however, that he had to return to the station immediately. He had another case, which he reasoned, he had the same motivation to solve as he had in the one that had met him head on in the morning. When the Arnold affair was ended, he would be able to pursue Caleb Brewster with the same tenacity that had catapulted him to professional success. The man had stolen his heart and seemed intent of holding it hostage, after all.

 

* * *

 

“I have to go, love,” Ellie Hewlett interrupted her best friend midsentence when she heard the inspector’s phone ring. “I have a call on the other line I have been long expecting.”

“ _Will you call me back?_ ” Effie begged. “ _Ells, there is something I really need to tell you._ ”

“I shan’t have the time, I fear – and I doubt you will either. We can catch up after Easter when I’m back in London. Until then, let me leave you with this: Paulo Genovese is about to die, likely within the vicinity of the central Manhattan police station.”

“ _Because of what we just wrote?_ ”

“Because he failed to keep Edmund safe from trouble as I had trusted him to do,” she said with a learned nonchalance that in no way corresponded to her actual feelings, adding in the same slightly bored tone, “Oh, but do leave my brother’s name out of it, would you? Blame it on the Gambinos. The other families surely will. Cheers, darling!”

She caught the phone on the last ring before Ferguson, visibly annoyed that he had made himself privy to any of this, could move to answer himself.

“You are late again, Paulo!” Ellie greeted, shifting to make herself comfortable on the inspector’s dining room chair, for a moment sharing in his stated annoyance that her associates had taken the couch. “I am beginning to think you and I need to readjust on our professional understanding.”

“ _I wanted to make sure it went down as planned before reporting back,”_ the mafioso excused himself.

“And?”

“ _Jefferson and Cali were both arrested. Tallmadge is nowhere to be seen._ ”

“You think he went down in the line of fire?” Ellie inquired, giving her genuine sentiment, “That is really a shame.”

_“Poetic, when you think on it. Lad hasn’t left the office in six years for fear of waking up in the bed Frankie Boy made empty for him. Now he and DS Hale can be together wherever cops go when they die.”_

“Hmm.”

_“So are we done?”_

“Not quite. Did you happen to overhear anything about the Arnold case?”

“ _They are pretty closed lipped, which means they either know nothing or they know everything._ ”

Ellie Hewlett did not care either way, but she had to keep Genovese on the line whilst simultaneously leading him out of the station to reduce the risk of collateral damage. “I know him, Arnold,” she told. “Knew him anyway. He was the one who gave me my nickname.”

 _“I thought that was part of the ‘e’-thing your family has had for centuries for reasons of fraud,_ ” he sheepishly remarked.

“No, no. It is a reference to Greek mythology. One of my favourite stories, in fact. Enyo was the goddess of destruction, conquest and bloodshed who was said to so _delight_ in battle that she refused to pick sides when asked to settle a dispute between Zeus and Typhon, using her influence and impartiality to elongate the conflict. That said,” she paused, “did you truly think, dear Paulo, that there would not be repercussions for you as well? I negotiated with every representative member of your committee individually to provide for my brother’s protection as the Crown does not think such is within its interest – tell me, was it truly so hard?” she asked, her practiced composure breaking. “He is a physicist! He spends his nights looking at the stars! Bloody hell, he is the most boring man I have ever in my life known! His only social engagement is playing in a Sunday league side with a few British expats and between you, you could not keep someone like _him_ from trouble?” she spat. “Don’t make deals you can’t deliver on, Paulo.”

“ _It was an oversight._ ”

“One that will cost you your head,” Ellie swore.

She heard Paulo Genovese hasten out of the police station, realising that he had been compromised.

“Oh? Leaving so soon?” she smarted.

_“Where are you?”_

“I’m war,” Ellie smiled. “I think you’ll now find I am everywhere. I promised you blood, and my dear – I always deliver. Arrivederci!” she rolled a code word to a line that went dead. With that, she handed Ferguson back his phone, taunting girlishly before showing him her tongue, “Don’t worry,” she winked, “we only kill each other.”

“It worked then?” the inspector asked.

“Did you honestly doubt that I of all people would be able to start a street war in a country I otherwise have no interest in? Tallmadge – or whomever – will search Genovese’s property and find the rest of the list before it can be of use to anyone else. With the power structure disrupted and alliances squandered, it is the perfect time for the NYPD to strike and bring the mafia down for good,” she explained. “Should they need any additional assistance on the trafficking side, I’ll be happy to provide all that I can in exchange for nolle prosequi – surely to be granted as I have nothing to do with that scene beyond once agreeing not to pursue their boundaries in exchange for their clandestinely providing Edmund with security should he ever need it, which, of course, they failed to do,” she shifted. “At least he still has Simcoe, I suppose.”

“And Tallmadge?” Ferguson asked.

“I don’t kill cops, Fergs,” she assured him again. “It is against my code – beyond which … what reason would I possibly have to do so? We are all ultimately on the same side. I want an end to the widespread use of narcotics more than, perhaps, anyone else on the face of this earth.”

The inspector took a seat beside her, his legs no doubt sore from an afternoon spent pacing the length of his small living room whist she regaled Elizabeth Gwillim with breaking news of everything set up to transpire on the other end of the world. “What will you do … when all this is over?” he asked almost shyly. Ellie searched his expression hoping to find grounds for this hesitation. It was not as though he had never put this question to her before.

“It will never be over,” she answered as she always did. “I’ll keep celebrating small victories until my hour comes.”

Ferguson looked at his watch, perhaps inadvertently. Ellie laughed all the same. “I’m just wondering if Kolina is going to show up today to bring my mum lunch,” he explained.

They sat in silence for a while, both staring at the time displayed on his wrist. “Tell me, will you laugh or cry at my funeral?” Ellie mused, seeing her minutes tick by.

“Bit of both,” Ferguson admitted. “But I shan’t live to see you buried. Your much younger than I am, Eleanor. Much … heathier.” Ellie snorted. She had long kept her diet limited for fear of being poisoned. No one knew this and no one needed to.

“I’m a member of the aristocracy. I’ll be killed from within as soon as I’ve exhausted my eminence, an heir and a spare as it were,” she assured him. “You declined my invitation to Eugene’s wedding, but surely you’ll be in attendance when I wed Torquhil and ascend to Inveraray, won’t you?” Ellie fought the urge to pout outright, fearing that it was moments like these she would most miss in the impending future.

“I would sooner have you arrested,” Ferguson said sharply.

“I do ever so hope you try.”

“Why don’t you just run away?” he shifted. “Surely you’ve the means to finance it.”

“I’ve considered it many times,” she smiled to herself, “but I love my brothers and sister far too much to … conduct myself like Edmund, shall we say. Not that I don’t admire him for it. Ah! To think of how different my life may have been had I taken the one chance I’ll likely ever be shown … not that I’ve come to regret not …” she trailed off. Some stories were better left unspoken lest fate chance a listen. Even if she could bring herself to say the name of the man who had nearly shown her salvation, it would be unthinkable to do so in present company. Easter, after all, was still two weeks away and she still had no idea how her favourite foe planned to use the opportunity she had handed him.

“What?”

“No. No I’m sorry but I see no point in telling stories in the subjunctive tense. Let’s live in the present and speak not of sad futures or the moments to which our minds are want to return. Do you still have any of the tea and biscuits that I sent? It is high time we put a kettle on and raised a toast to Ben Tallmadge.”

 

* * *

 

It was odd, the pace of change.

Hours earlier the two had spoken face to face for the first time in years, for the first time as friends.

Arriving back at 1PP two hours behind the rest of his team, Ben Tallmadge spotted Paulo Genovese on the stairs of his station seconds before the famed mafioso blew his own brains out.

The inspector screamed for backup as he quickened to approach, feeling a hand on his shoulder as he bent down, searching for a murder weapon, knowing that he would not find a pulse in the blood and carnage that had come to replace his Genovese’s heavy features.

“Tallmadge! Tallmadge!”

He turned to see ADIC Hamilton behind him. “Leave this to CSI,” the FBI director instructed. “You need to come inside immediately. The news of Genoese’s death has been on the MailOnline App for three minutes now, the latest in a series of articles surrounding your morning involvement. Lafayette has been with Hewlett all morning which tells me we were wrong, the press leak is coming from within. Muster your team, Inspector. You are all hours late for a briefing. Washington does not like to be kept waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s just do some notes.  
> Mafia:  
>  **Frank Cali** is the current boss of the Gambino crime family. **Paulo Genovese** exists only for the purposes of this narrative, the largest crime syndicate in New York lacking a current leader. **The Commission** is the governing body of the American Mafia, formed in 1931 to replace capo dei capi (“boss of all bosses”) with a ruling committee consisting of the bosses of each of the Five Families of New York.  
>  **Omertà** is a code of honour that places importance on silence, non-cooperation with authorities, and non-interference in the illegal actions of others. (Wikipedia)  
>  Football:  
> I have no reason to believe that Spurs midfielder **Dele Alli** would be so naïve as to convince himself that he was dating a diva twenty years his senior (and, in reality, 200+ years deceased) but he is adorable and has a very cute ‘dog of Instagram’ that just fit the narrative.  
>  **Hugo Lloris** is the goalkeeper and captain of Tottenham Hotspur.  
>  Back in 2004 when the world still loved him, football-legend and fragile narcissist **José Mourinho** bought a terrier in Portugal and punched a policeman when he was told that he could not bring the animal into the UK. The dog then ran away and the public became obsessed with the saga for a full season. I would be _surprised_ if there were not a number of small dogs bought during this period named for The Special One. (If you throw this into google, you can find a number of inspirational posters with Mou’s final assessment of the affair: _The dog is in Portugal and the city of London is safe._ … I guess it is better than the ‘Just hang in there!’ cat that existed in the same period.)  
>  In case you missed it: **[Rihanna is a gooner.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqR_7SeijQ0) **  
>  To Historical Persons:  
>  **Perdita** and **the English Sappho** were both nicknames Mary Robinson wore within her lifetime.  
>  **“Very democratic”** and **“[what] a pack of nonsense”** were catch-all insults Elizabeth Gwillim liked to use in her diaries.  
>  Geography:  
> I may be biased here, but **Hamburg** is hands down the number one best city in Europe. A story? Okay! This is what happened the last time I visited. I am on the train. As I exit, what is there to greet me but a man in a trench coat and his exposed tra-la-la. I smile and wish him luck with that. I move 2 metres further. A man on a fish bucket tells me that I am going to hell for my heels. He is as specific in his fashion critique as he is in his Qur’anic recitation. I tell him I bought them at C+A for half price. He asks if the sale if still going on and tells me a bit about his wife, whom I am sure he made happy when he finished condemning the rest of the morning commuters. Then, I went to Starbucks, still at the Hbh. They spell my name correctly. It is 8 AM and I have one of those foreign names you have to simultaneously choke and swallow whilst speaking. Hamburg is a very educated city with a very polite and world-open population. (Then I went to a ton of meetings where no one wasted time because it is a place of pure magic.)  
>  After the military coup in 1980, many Kurds were forcibly relocated to **Diyarbakır** (known as **Amed** in Kurdish). The story Yilmaz tells about her mother’s tongue corresponds to an actual government policy of the era. Much of the dialogue, however, was taken from the second season of TURN and adapted slightly to this narrative.  
>  Misc.:  
> In European folklore **Melusine** was the daughter of a fairy princess and the king of what is now Scotland who was either a serpent or a fish from the waist down and left her noble husband when he broke his oath not to look at her while she was in the bath. I don’t recall the specifics, but I distinctly remember something from history about Richard I forming an alliance with one of the many, many Raymonds of the Third Crusade based on the understanding that they both were descendants of this same water-sprite. Wicked, or?  
>  **Nolle prosequi** is a Latin phrase used in the context of the criminal justice system to describe a prosecutor's decision to voluntarily discontinue charges.  
>  So! There we have it. And what is to come?  
> Edit 25.05: I know I am way late with an update, and I feel bad but also … like the English NT post failing to qualify for the 2008 Euros. We don't expect quality anymore, and I am worried that the same can be said of H+S. It is just rubbish.


End file.
